Pazienza holds a degree in medicine from the University of Rome. He worked as a business consultant in France during the 1970s. In 1979 he was hired into SISMI, and became an assistant to SISMI director, General Giuseppe Santovito. Pazienza left the intelligence agency in wake of the Propaganda Due scandal that rocked the Italian political scene in 1981. The Banco Ambrosiano scandal, Roberto Calvi's "suicide," and charges of mishandling state secrets concerned with the 1980 Bologna bombing, made Pazienza a fugitive from Italian law.