PASSINGS

Susanna Agnelli, 87, a member of Italy’s powerful Fiat auto dynasty and a former foreign minister, died May 15 in a Rome hospital. She had been at Gemelli Polyclinic since April 3 after breaking a leg in a fall.

Agnelli served as foreign minister for Lamberto Dini’s government in the mid-1990s and held political positions including mayor of a Tuscan seacoast resort, Monte Argentario, and senator in parliament.

Agnelli was the younger sister of Giovanni “Gianni” Agnelli, the stylish business baron whose rule over Italy’s auto empire made him and his family a symbol of the nation’s postwar climb to prosperity.

Gianni Agnelli, grandson of the auto company’s founder, died in 2003. His eldest grandson, John Elkann, is vice chairman of Fiat.

“We Wore Sailor Suits,” Susanna Agnelli’s memoirs about growing up in Italy’s most powerful family, became a bestseller in 1976.

She was born April 24, 1922, in Turin, Italy, the third of seven children.

A Red Cross volunteer on a hospital ship during World War II, Agnelli devoted much of her life to charitable and humanitarian causes. She had been the head of Italy’s Telethon, a major TV fundraiser, since 1992. Agnelli started a foundation, Faro (Lighthouse), through which troubled Italian and foreign youths could learn a trade.

In the 1980s, she was a member of the United Nations international human rights commission.

The mother of six was divorced from Urbano Rattazzi, her husband of 30 years, in 1975.

In an interview with the Washington Post some years ago, she described the most difficult part of politics: “Sitting for days listening to people talk, talk, talk. Male politicians can stand up and talk to an empty house, where there are six people reading newspapers. I could never do that. It’s such a waste of time.”

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