ABSTRACT
A leading faction of the Christian Democrat Party (see DC) which took its name from the convent of Saint Dorotea in which it was founded in 1959, the Dorotei occupied a powerful pivotal position in the party for the next decade, conditioning the party’s leadership and political choices. Led by Mariano Rumor, Emilio Russo, Emilio Colombo and Paolo Emilio Taviani, the group’s main aim was to oppose the then party secretary and prime minister, Amintore Fanfani and his policy of an ‘opening to the Left’. For a time the faction was supported by Aldo Moro, until he founded his own group (the socalled ‘Morotei’). By 1964 the Dorotei controlled around 46 per cent of the party’s national congress delegates, but they also embodied the worst aspects of Christian Democrat clientelism and power-grabbing. The faction split in the early 1970s and became identified more directly with various leaders such as Colombo, Rumor and Piccoli. The term doroteismo, or sometimes neo-doroteismo, was used until the late 1980s to describe the centre of the DC.
