Verso la «costituzione più cattolica del mondo»: l’Irlanda di Eamon De Valera, la Santa Sede e la riforma costituzionale irlandese del 1937

Abstract

In 1932, Eamon De Valera, leader of the Republican Party Fianna Fail, was elected as President of the Irish Free State. After William Cosgrave pro-British decade, a new political era began. Republican President started a process of state reform in order to convert Ireland from a British dominion to an independent republic. Mainly based on unpublished records from the Archivio Segreto Vaticano, the essay focuses on the evolution of international relations between Ireland and the Holy See during the Thirties. In 1930 Pius XI sent an Apostolic Nuncio, Mgr Paschal Robinson, to Dublin in order to improve Anglo-Vatican relationship. The beginning of De Valera’s anti-British course alarmed Vatican diplomacy. Nevertheless, De Valera showed his diplomatic abilities and in five years he became one of the most loyal fellow of the Holy See. Republican President drove Irish Free State towards a constitutional reform that qualified Ireland as a catholic State. In 1957, the former Secretary of State Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli – at the time Pope Pius XII – would name Irish constitution as «the most catholic constitution in the world».