Church and State in Italy

Abstract

C HURCH and State in Italy' is not only a highly controversial subject but also a very complex one. There are many aspects of the problem, and many sides of the picture: each of them might require a lecture for itself. I do not want to give you merely a vague general idea of the whole question, and I think, too, that it may be more useful here to consider some precise juridical and constitutional situations rather than political events, whose choice and interpretation is always more controversial. So I shall confine myself to explaining the main constitutional aspects of the situation, which is characterized by the coexistence of the Lateran Agreements, concluded between the Holy See and Italy in I929, and the new Italian Constitution, adopted in I947. First of all let us briefly recall the origin of these two documents. Italy was unified in i86i as a Kingdom under the House of Savoy. The Constitution was the so-called Statuto, granted to Piedmont by Carlo Alberto of Savoy in I848. After i86i, the capital of Italy was Turin, and later Florence. The Pope, protected by France, was still sovereign in Rome and in a part of the old Stato Pontificio. After the defeat of Napoleon III by the Prussians in I870, the unification of Italy extended also to the last remains of the old Stato Pontificio, and Rome became the capital. The Pope stayed on in the Vatican, refusing to accept the Legge delle Guarentigie, that is, the Law of Guarantees, which the Italian Parliament had passed in order to ensure to the Holy See and to the Catholic Church the widest freedom to carry on their religious activities. This situation lasted for more than half a century, until Mussolini, on ii February I929, signed with Cardinal Gasparri, the Secretary of State of Pope Pius the Eleventh, the Patti Lateranensi, or Lateran Pacts (so called from the Palazzo Laterano, near San Giovanni, an old residence of the Popes). They included the Treaty, whereby Italy agreed to recognize the 'State of the City of the Vatican', formed by the Vatican buildings around the Church of St Peter, and the Concordat, which was to regulate the activities of the Catholic Church in Italy. Attached was a Convenzione finanziaria, that is, a financial agreement, according to which Italy paid to the Holy See 750 million lire cash and one billion lire in State bonds (a total sum corresponding more or less to one hundred billion Italian lire of