Luigi Sturzo Research Articles

Introduzione alla filosofia dello Stato e della politica di Luigi Sturzo

Introduction to the Luigi Sturzo’s philosophy of state and politics ABSTRACT: The paper offers an introductory overview of the thought of Luigi Sturzo, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of his death, retracing the essential nodes of his philosophy of the State and politics. The issues addressed by sturzian reflection, in fact, not only stand as paradigmatic for the understanding of the historical phenomena that occurred in the 20th century, but due to their relevance and rationality they are also proposed as tools for understanding the current political and legal reality. SOMMARIO: 1. Introduzione - 2. Il contesto storico - 3. Filosofia dello Stato e della politica di Luigi Sturzo - 3.1 - Crisi dello Stato e democrazia - 3.2 - Stato e statalismo - 3.3 - Partiti e partitocrazia - 4. Conclusioni.

Antifaschismus als Antitotalitarismus? Francesco Luigi Ferrari (1889–1933)

Outside Italy, little is known of the anti-Fascism of Francesco Luigi Ferrari, one of the closest allies of Sicilian priest and Christian Democrat Luigi Sturzo. Based on his most important publications before and after his exile (1926), the contribution pursues this crucial question: Did Ferrari, in ways similar to Sturzo’s, combine anti-Fascism with anti-totalitarianism? How did he comparatively classify Italian Fascism as a movement and a regime? To which analytical categories did he reach back for this purpose? Did he change his attitude over time?

Gramsci and the issue of religion: Catholic modernism and the Italian Partito Popolare

ABSTRACTGramsci's interest in Italian politics led him to tackle a key issue in the present-day discourse: the relationship between the Holy See and the national State. Additionally, he paid close attention to internal issues of Christianity, from its origins to his own times and – similar to many other socialist thinkers – he believed that there were several echoes between the early Christian experiences and contemporary socialism. From this arose his concern with the religious crisis of the early twentieth century – so-called ‘Modernism’ – as well as the story of the Partito Popolare (Popular Party, PPI), the organization founded by the priest Luigi Sturzo after the First World War, which was marked – especially amongst its left-wing components – by its anti-fascist positions.

Italy and its oil dealings with Libya. Limits and obligations of a dependency: the difficult 1970s and 1980s

The strategic importance of Libya to Italy’s energy interests has been a constant feature of Italy’s attitude towards the republican regime which was recognized on 1 September 1969. This followed a tradition already well established by Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi’s (ENI) actions and, even earlier, by the presence of numerous Italians going back to the colonial period. However, Italy’s need for oil often clashed with the complex and changing personality of Gaddafi and created a relationship that was constantly at risk. The Italian government and ENI often found themselves in great difficulty because of the inconvenient demands of the Arab leader. The purpose of this article is to examine the development of this difficult oil relationship, focusing attention on both the 1970s and 1980s. There is a wealth of Italian literature on this subject but most of the studies examine only the start of the 1970s and the oil crisis of 1973. Although scholarly works reassessing this topic in English are rather limited, there exists an important international literature on Libyan history and the oil issue. New documentation now available at the Giulio Andreotti Archive of the Luigi Sturzo Institute Historical Archive makes it possible to complete this earlier research and to analyze the later years. Andreotti was the leading actor in the relationship with Gaddafi during the 1970s and 1980s and, in general, he was the most powerful and prominent Italian politician at least until the late 1980s. Consequently, this article mainly uses the unpublished documents of the Giulio Andreotti Archive and documentation from ENI’s Historical Archive. Thanks to these sources, it now appears possible to reconstruct in greater detail the decisive moments of the Italian–Libyan collaboration. The article, by retracing the key moments of this difficult relationship from the point of view of oil issues and examining in depth the complicated events of 1970s and 1980s, aims to highlight both the importance of energy supplies for Italy and the role played by both ENI and Andreotti in an attempt to maintain Italian oil interests in Libya.

Les populaires et le parlement italien (1919–24) [The Popular and the Italian Parliament (1919–24)

ABSTRACT On 18 January 1919, Luigi Sturzo (Caltagirone 1871–Rome 1959), the Italian priest and politician, a Fascist dissident and fervent Europeanist, founded the Italian Popular Party (PPI) by pronouncing his Appello ai liberi e forti. The new PPI marked the entrance of Catholics to the political life of the country. Indeed, after the unification of Italy, Catholics had not been able to vote in political elections due to a provision issued by Pope Pius IX in 1874, the so-called non expedit, which had forbidden them from participating in the political elections of the kingdom of Italy. In the elections of 16 November 1919 – after the reform that led to the transition from the uninominal electoral system to the proportional electoral system and the extension of the right to vote to all 21-year old male citizens – the PPI secured 20.5 per cent of the votes. One hundred PPI candidates were elected, proving to be an indispensable force for the institution of any new government. The serious economic difficulties and the social contrasts, caused in large part by the First World War and by an institutional system unable to cope with the crisis, would have subsequently led to the establishment of the fascist regime. PPI members elected in 1919 were active in implementing institutional reforms that attempted to bring parliamentary representation to the real life of the country. This was to be achieved in the following ways: by renewing the apparatus of political representation, that is safeguarding the role of parliament as the central organ of a democratic system; by transforming the old constitutional model of cabinet government, with prime ministers appointed by the crown and chosen by parliamentary hybrid majorities, into a new parliamentary government based on the trust of majorities formed by parties with common programmes.

Pueblo y autoridad: cómo pasar del populismo al popularismo

El artículo se fija el objetivo de considerar el término pueblo y autoridad en la perspectiva cristiana, con especial referencia a la perspectiva teórica del sociólogo-politólogo italiano Luigi Sturzo. A partir de la constatación de que el compartir por parte del líder de las instancias de su pueblo: “estar en medio de la gente” puede asumir diferentes significados, a veces, contradictorios, el autor analiza el posible significado de la noción “pueblo” en la tradición “populista” clásica y en la del “popularismo”, en cuanto teoría política que nace como tentativo de Sturzo de situar dentro de un contexto histórico los principios de la Doctrina Social de la Iglesia. Para que sea clara la relación-diferencia entre “populismo” – “popularismo”, el autor introduce el concepto de “autoridad política” desarrollado por Sturzo, el cual a una problemática noción de “we rationality” le opone una “concreta” “racionalidad del yo”: el principio “unificador trascendente”, capaz de trascender el propio interés inmediato para hacer propias las razones del otro.

Polsko-włoskie badań nad historią opieki i wychowania. Stanisław Litak i Gabriele De Rosa

The biggest influence on my life and science interests regarding history of social care and education had professors Stanisław Litak (1932–2010) and Gabriele De Rosa (1917–2009). Prof. Litak was always related with Catholic University of Lublin. He was my teacher, master and promoter of my master thesis and PhD thesis. He was a prominent scientist of the history of the Church, especially parishes. The second field of his interests was the history of learning and education. He published the results of his research by means of atlas-cartographical methods. As the excellent expert Church archives he belonged to the most prominent specialists of cartography and historical cartography. My science interests were inspired also by professor Gabriele De Rosa. The prominent historian was also engaged in politics. He belonged to Christian Democracy, envoy to the Italian parliament and senator of Italian Republic. He lectured on universities in Salerno, Padova, Rome. He was performing the function of the of lots of organizations, publishing houses and scientific journals. Among others he was a director of Luigi Sturzo Institute (1979–2006) and operating with it Italian-Polish Historical School (1983–1996), from which I get a scholarship. In 1981 I have also done scientifical training on the University of Sapienza in Rome with him. He was a researcher of Italian Catholic activities, history of the Church, mercy, folk piety and religiosity. Follower of concept of the French school Annales.

Antonio Genovesi and Italian economic thought: when ethics matters in economics

The renewed interest in studies of Italian Enlightenment after the Second World War has enabled a complex new understanding of the Italian contribution to political economy. In particular, a new line of research that brings together the analysis of commercial society developed by Italian economists, and the canon of « civil life » elaborated within classical civic humanism and the natural legal tradition, has explained the deep ethical and social concerns inherent in the Italian approach to economic studies. This collection of articles takes stock of some of these achievements in scholarship and, at the same time, offers some new elements about the hermeneutical role played by these fundamental relationships between economics and ethics in identifying a more complex and multidimensional structure of scientific discourse. The articles are a selection of those presented at three conferences held in 2013, thanks to the support of the Luigi Sturzo Institute and Milan-Bicocca University, in Naples (Banco di Roma Foundation), Rome (Lumsa University) and Milan (Istituto Lombardo - Accademia di Scienze e Lettere), and they explore the thought of Antonio Genovesi as well as Eighteenth-Century Italian economic thought.

“No meio da gente”:

O artigo discute os termos povo e autoridade na perspectiva cristã, com particular referência à perspectiva teórica do sociólogo e cientista político Luigi Sturzo. A partir da constatação de que as decisões do líder das necessidades do povo – o “estar no meio da gente” – pode assumir diversos sentidos, por vezes contraditórios, o autor analisa o possível significado da noção de ‘povo’ na tradição ‘populista’ clássica e naquela do ‘popularismo’ como a teoria política que nasce como tentativa de Sturzo de historicizar os princípios da Doutrina Social da Igreja. Para tornar clara a relação e a diferença entre o populismo e o popularismo, o autor introduz o conceito de ‘autoridade política’ desenvolvido por Sturzo, que a uma noção problemática de ‘we rationality’ opõe uma “concreta” “racionalidade do eu”: o princípio “unificador transcendente”, a ponto de transcender o próprio interesse imediato para fazer próprias as razões dos outros.

Is the European Union Secular? Christian Democracy in the European treaties and jurisprudence

This paper develops a theoretical framework for understanding the way in which the relations between politics and religion are structured institutionally at the level of the European Union. The argument advanced is that, although it is common to assume that European institutions provide a bulwark for the protection of ‘secularism’ and ‘laicite’, a more adequate category for describing the way in which these relations are structured within the framework of the European Union as it exists today is offered by an ideal-typical notion of ‘Christian Democracy’. In order to substantiate this thesis, the paper focuses on the discussion of a number of concrete features of the institutional structure of the European Union that do not fit with traditional definitions of secularism and laicite, but resonate with the way in which the notion of ‘Christian Democracy’ was theorized in the work of some of its most representative exponents, such as Luigi Sturzo, Alcide De Gasperi and Jacques Maritain.

Catholicism and Cosmopolitanism: the Confluence of Three Catholic Scholars and the Cosmopolitan Democrats on State Sovereignty and the Future of Global Governance

One of the central questions in international relations today is how we should conceive of state sovereignty. The notion of sovereignty—’supreme authority within a territory’, as Daniel Philpott defines it—emerged after the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 as a result of which the late medieval crisis of pluralism was settled. But recent changes in the international order, such as technological advances that have spurred globalization and the emerging norm of the Responsibility to Protect, have cast the notion of sovereignty into an unclear light. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the current debate regarding sovereignty by exploring two schools of thought on the matter: first, three Catholic scholars from the past century—Luigi Sturzo, Jacques Maritain, and John Courtney Murray, S.J.—taken as representative of Catholic tradition; second, a number of contemporary political theorists of cosmopolitan democracy. The paper argues that there is a confluence between the Catholic thinkers and the cosmopolitan democrats regarding their understanding of state sovereignty and that, taken together, the two schools have much to contribute not only to our current understanding of sovereignty, but also to the future of global governance.

Catholics in the Irish Parliament: Daniel O'Connell and his influence in Italy

SUMMARYDaniel O'Connell (Cahersiveen 1775–Genoa 1847), Irish politician and patriot, fought for Catholic emancipation, and to repeal the penal laws discriminating Irish Catholics and the 1800 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland (effective from 1 January 1801). Believing firmly in non-violence, he defended the representation of Irish Catholics in parliament as the most appropriate instrument to support their rights. His thoughts and actions were widespread and known in Italy and Europe while some Catholics were arguing about a possible reconciliation between religion and freedom and on the resulting openness to the principles of democracy and to the problem of representation. The Theatine Gioacchino Ventura (1792–1861) from Palermo, one of the leaders of the Sicilian revolution of 1848, was a great admirer of O'Connell, so much so that after his death he delivered a funeral eulogy at Sant'Andrea della Valle Church in Rome. Ventura, recognized among the precursors of the current liberal and democratic Italian Catholic movement, shared the causes embraced by O'Connell and he considered him to be the first mediator between Church and modern society. He believed that O'Connell was a champion of liberalism who had succeeded in combining nationalistic reason with freedom, the right to vote and the eligibility of Catholics. Following Ventura, Luigi Sturzo (1871–1959), another member of the Italian Catholic movement and founder of the first Catholic party (PPI), was inspired by the political experience of O'Connell, considering him to be the forerunner of constitutional Catholics on the continent. Sturzo worked for the inclusion of Catholics in the state political structures, contributing to the realization of full democracy.

Cattolici e fascisti: La Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del Regime (1919–1925) by Alberto Guasco (review)

Reviewed by: Cattolici e fascisti: La Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del Regime (1919–1925) by Alberto Guasco Roy Domenico Cattolici e fascisti: La Santa Sede e la politica italiana all’alba del Regime (1919–1925). By Alberto Guasco. (Bologna: Società editrice il Mulino. 2013. Pp. 575. €40,00 paperback. ISBN 978-88-15-24520-5.) This new book of Alberto Guasco, a professor of politics at the University of Turin and a researcher at the John XXIII Foundation for Religious Sciences in Bologna, joins the growing body of work that has taken advantage of recent access to the records of Pius XI’s pontificate. The reader may wonder why the book ends in 1925 rather than 1929, when the Lateran Pacts concluded a long era of difficult Italo-Vatican relations. The author answers that, as 1929 and the 1930s have received extensive treatment, an examination of the early 1920s brings back into view other important but neglected factors such as World War I. The year 1925, moreover, marks the resolution of the murder of the Socialist deputy Giacomo Matteotti, the end of Benito Mussolini’s vacillations, and the establishment of his Fascist dictatorship. By 1925, therefore, the Church and others understood much better the true nature of the Fascist beast. Guasco paints the picture of a Church under both Benedict XV and Pius XI that was unsure of itself in its approach to Mussolini’s blackshirts. After the Bolshevik conquest of power in Russia and in the politically charged atmosphere of postwar Europe, Rome desperately searched for a political alternative to the ever-bolder left. Toward that end Benedict was open to the creation of a Catholic Party, the Popolari under don Luigi Sturzo, whereas the next pontiff was more skeptical. Pius, in contrast, preferred a less political solution in Italian Catholic Action. Furthermore, Guasco concludes that, for both Benedict and Pius, the Popolari failed to measure up to expectations as counterweights to the liberals and subsequently the [End Page 626] Fascists. Fragmented and quarrelsome, some advocating an alliance with the socialists and others favoring deals with the Fascists, the Catholic Party might have self-destructed even without the help of Mussolini and Pius. But what of the Fascists themselves? Toward them the Church also was split. Some, like Francesco Borgongini Duca, who became the first nuncio to Italy in 1929, told the duce that “the enemies of the Church are the enemies of Fascism and those who fight the Church cannot be the true friends of Fascism.” On the other hand, Guasco illustrates how blackshirt violence gnawed at Rome’s estimation. Gabriele D’Annunzio’s 1919 “conquest” of Fiume alarmed many clerics; violent clashes between Mussolini’s men and leftists then added to the unease. But the Fascists also targeted Catholic activists, culminating in the vicious and murderous attack on the Popolare priest, Giovanni Minzoni, in August 1923. But by that time the Fascists were in power and had expressed their willingness to resolve the differences—the so-called “Roman Question”—between the state and the Church. The party of don Sturzo and don Minzoni was doomed. Guasco’s Cattolici e fascisti is a solid work based on admirable archival research and with reference to recent studies by Lucia Ceci, Giovanni Sale, and others. Of special importance and merit, the book concludes with 150 documents, many archival and most in print for the first time, with Guasco’s comments and references. Roy Domenico University of Scranton Copyright © 2014 The Catholic University of America Press

Lucia Ceci. L'interesse superiore: Il Vaticano e l'Italia di Mussolini.

The relationship between fascism and the Catholic Church in Italy has been one of the most important subjects in Italian historiography over the last fifty years. Two positions predominate: the first emphasizes the alliance between Catholics (often within the church hierarchy, but not always) and the fascist regime, while the second attempts to recover the opposition of Catholics to the regime (from the founder of the Partito Popolare, Father Luigi Sturzo, in the 1920s up to the armed resistance to the regime in the years 1943–1945). Lucia Ceci's book criticizes the instrumental alliance between the papacy and Benito Mussolini for the sake of the “superior interest” of the church. This approach omits many other actors in the history of the connections and convergences between Catholicism and fascism in Italy but also provides a framework for understanding the evolution of Mussolini's position regarding the church—from the fierce anticlericalism of his early years and of the Partito Nazionale Fascista, to his cynical embrace of Catholicism as a pillar of the fascist regime in Italy.

Les institutions italiennes à travers les analyses de Luigi Sturzo (1871-1959)

From the 1950s Luigi Sturzo captured the dysfunctions of the democratic system instituted in Italy. He courageously denounced the evils that afflicted the newborn democracy. The strange relationship between government and opposition, the growing importance of the parties, the proliferation of legislation, the reversal of functions between parliament and government, the reform of the Senate, are just some of the problems identified by Sturzo. His criticism, however, was not pointless but proactive in the meaning that he diagnosed in weaknesses and indicated the means for a better and more efficient working of institutions in a democratic country without making it necessary to undermine the constitutional structure. At the basis of this, he articulated the idea of an ‘organic democracy’ and especially the inseparable link between morality and politics.

De Mammona iniquitatis. Spiritually poor: the Sturzian roots of the Encyclical “Caritas in veritate” of Benedict XVI

The present work has been done for the scope of Study in honor of Professor Franco Bolognini. SUMMARY: The spirit of the present contribution: “the economics as if the person would count1” – 1. Essential notes on the “popular capitalism” in the thought of Luigi Sturzo - 2. The economical liberty and the rules’ liberalism – 3. Synthesis considerations.

‘Clerical Fascism’: Context, Overview and Conclusion

It was the Catholic priest and leader of the Italian People's Party, Luigi Sturzo, who first coined the term ‘clerico‐fascism’, rather than ‘clerical fascism’, back in 1922. He applied it to former...

Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Struggle for Democracy and Social Justice by Thomas Bokenkotter

BOOK REVIEWS General Church and Revolution: Catholics in the Strugglefor Democracy and Social Justice. By Thomas Bokenkotter. [Image Books.] (New York: Doubleday. 1998. Pp. xii, 580. $15.95 paperback.) How did the Catholic Church become a staunch defender of human rights in the late twentieth-century world, after having spent the nineteenth century in emphatic denunciations of the French Revolution and its "rights of man"? A seasoned historian proposes to cast light on this question chiefly by presenting a series of biographical portraits that illustrate his subtitle. "Lives and times" are what the reader finds here, presented with great care for factual accuracy and balanced judgment. Though highly selective, it is not a gallery only of heroes and champions of human dignity: alongside of Daniel O'Connell, Frédéric Ozanam, Luigi Sturzo, and Dorothy Day one finds Monsignor Umberto Benigni (1862-1934), whose campaigns for the social ideals of Leo XIII, as he understood them, and against political democracy, led him eventually to adopt a clerico-fascist stance. The temporal and geographical range of the figures treated is broad. The sixteen chapters go from Lamennais and companions in the first generation of Liberal Catholics to Oscar Romero's martyrdom in 1980 and Lech Walesa's contemporary "revolution." France (Albert de Mun,Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier) and Ireland (O'Connell, Michael Collins, and Eamon de Valera) are prominent. Italy has its pair as noted, while England is represented by Cardinal Manning; Germany (only) by (Karl Marx and) Konrad Adenauer. The need to sketch the appropriate context for each life excluded any attempt at blanket coverage of all the interesting and significant Catholics prominent in the human rights struggles. Performing feats of condensation, the author vividly and not uncritically portrays the predicaments of his protagonists. In the chapter on Adenauer, for instance, he makes excellent use of Noel D. Cary's Path to Christian Democracy (1996) and provides enough of the history of Germany and the Center Party to put Adenauer's accomplishments in context. The popes of the era do not appear on center stage, either; Leo XIII and Pius X are accurately if briefly described in the chapter on Benigni; as is Pius XI in 261 262BOOK REVIEWS connection with Don Sturzo. The contributions of Rerum Novarum, Quadragesimo Anno, the Second Vatican Council, and John Paul II are recognized, but the plan of the work is not to deal with "the Catholic Church" (often equated with the hierarchy, as on p. 569), but with some striking figures of social and political "Catholicism." Such limits make sense; a good deal of material, relatively speaking, is available on the modern papacy. The book is a particularly welcome addition to Catholic studies for instructional purposes. Though lacking a bibliography or "suggestions for further reading ," it has a good, if less than exhaustive index; its footnotes are well placed (at the bottom of the page) and adequate, while kept to a useful miriirnum. Its limpid style and modest price should help assure it broad use. Paul Misner Marquette University Dizionario degli Istituti di Perfezione. Edited by Guerrino Pelliccia and Giancarlo Rocca. Vol. LX: "Spiritualità-Vézelay." (Rome: Edizioni Paoline. 1997. Pp. xxvi, 1,960; 17 colored plates.) These truly monumental volumes, undertaken in the wake ofVatican Council II in 1968, ambition covering all monasticism, religious Orders, and analogous movements, not excluding non-Catholic and Asian analogues, from the Early Church to the present day, from a largely historical perspective, including themes, mentalities, theologies, and movements, in comprehensive scope. Its riches are so varied and sometimes unexpected under their Italian indicators that we Anglophones must hope for ample multilingual indexes at the end. Major themes can amount to small books, as with Historiography of religious life (77 columns), the role of Study including libraries (85 columns), Third Orders both regular and secular (81 columns), or Virginity (56 columns). Generous space is also accorded Theater, monastic Taxes, Trent on religious life, Theology, and concepts such as Spouse of Christ, State of Perfection, Tonsure, and the process and history of Leaving (Uscita). Some entries are particularly contemporary: the problem of an aging population in Orders (Terza Eta), the pros and cons of the Third Way as...

Vichy France and the Catholic Press in England. Contrasting Attitudes to a Moral Problem

Luigi Sturzo, the exiled founder of the suppressed Italian Christian Democrats, wrote in May 1942 that American Catholic papers prior to the American entry into the war had been sympathetic to Franco and even Mussolini as well as to Vichy France. After Pearl Harbor, these papers retained their sympathy for Vichy France.

Luigi Sturzo et la critique de l'état totalitaire

Luigi Sturzo and the critique of the totalitarian State, Jean-Luc Pouthier. Forced into exile in 1924, Don Sturzo was one of the first to describe the nature of Italian fascism and to set it within a wider analysis of the totalitarian State. Mussolini's opponent had understood precociously the rupture which this " State pantheism " introduced : European public opinion badly misunderstood its awful novelty. His diagnostis helps us today to return to the origins of the uses of the word " totalitarianism ".