Il sillabario a Canossa. La Conferenza episcopale triveneta e l’ecumenismo negli anni Settanta

Abstract

This article, focused on the Seventies, deals with the relationship between the Triveneto Episcopal Conference and its president, future John Paul I, with the theme of ecumenism. The article aims to demonstrate how ecumenism was not a central theme for the Triveneto episcopate during this period for various reasons. First of all, because of the delay in theological formation of the Italian bishops in comparison with the transalpine ones. Secondly, because of the social and political climate, which imposed other urgencies to the Italian episcopate. Finally, the interpretative hypothesis refers to a strictly ecclesiological element: the diffusion of ecumenical instances within Catholic progressivism and the (presumed) contiguity of the nascent ecumenical movement with the variegated world of ecclesial contestation. The article uses little known sources, such as the personal archive of don Germano Pattaro, protagonist of the first steps of the ecumenical path in Italy in the Sixties and Seventies, and unpublished documentation preserved in the Archive of the Triveneto Episcopal Conference.