Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
Jorge Dagnino
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000
Series Editor
David Nash
Department of History
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, United Kingdom
Aims of the Series
This series reflects the awakened and expanding profile of the history of
religion within the academy in recent years. It intends publishing exciting
new and high quality work on the history of religion and belief since
1700 and will encourage the production of interdisciplinary proposals and
the use of innovative methodologies. The series will also welcome book
proposals on the history of Atheism, Secularism, Humanism and unbelief/
secularity and to encourage research agendas in this area alongside those
in religious belief. The series will be happy to reflect the work of new
scholars entering the field as well as the work of established scholars. The
series welcomes proposals covering subjects in Britain, Europe, the United
States and Oceana.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
vii
viii Contents
Bibliography225
Index245
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
and religious itinerary of the future pontiff, Paul VI. Many of these studies
have been characterised by a limited sense of a proper historical dimension
and have neglected other important aspects of the history of the FUCI,
such as its place within lay Catholic life in the 1920s and 1930s, and its
engagement with the principal intellectual trends of the time. It is these
shortcomings that this study sets out to address.3
Structure
Broadly speaking, this book is divided into three parts and an epilogue. It
follows a chronological structure that coincides with the three presiden-
cies that marked the history of the association during the period under
study. Thus, the first part extends from 1925 to 1933, when the FUCI
was led by Igino Righetti and Giovanni Battista Montini; the second
from 1933 to 1939 when the organisation was presided over by Giovanni
Ambrosetti; and, finally, the last part is devoted to the years 1939 to 1943
when the federation was under the rule of the young Aldo Moro and
Giulio Andreotti.
According to the prevailing interpretations, the FUCI of the 1925–33
period was characterised by an intellectual openness and the willingness
of the federation to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the modern world,
which eschewed the attitude of condemnations and anathemas that was
common to many Catholic circles of the time. Moreover, in the political
domain, the federation is commonly presented as having been immune to
the attractions of Fascism or, indeed, directly anti-Fascist. In contrast to
this predominant view, it is argued in the present study that the FUCI in
this era was characterised by a high degree of ambiguity and ambivalence
with regard to the modern world and modernity in general. Moreover, in
my analysis, a much more conservative Montini and FUCI emerge—an
association that was not devoid of a spirit of conquest and of a militant and
intransigent Catholicism, fuelled by a vision of an ideological and totalis-
ing Catholicism.
The first part ends with the examination of the relationship between
the Catholic student association and Fascism. Undoubtedly these were
troubled times for the FUCI, marked by the violent clashes that occurred
at the national congress of Macerata in 1926 and, above all, by the crisis
of 1931 in relations between the church and the Fascist regime over the
youth groups of Catholic Action. While the majority of the leaders of
the organisation had no Fascist sympathies, within the rank and file the
INTRODUCTION 3
who would become a frequent contributor to the FUCI press and works.11
During his pontificate, Paul VI would nominate Father Giulio Bevilacqua
as cardinal. At the Oratory he also became acquainted with Father Paolo
Caresana, who eventually became his personal confessor. Another impor-
tant experience in the biography of the young Giovanni Battista Montini
was his collaboration with the periodical La Fionda, edited by his friend
Andrea Trebeschi, who would die in a Nazi concentration camp in 1945.
Montini quickly rose to a position of leadership at the periodical, which
promoted a religiosity lived as a source of societal renewal after the tragedy
of the Great War—a conflict that the young fiondisti had supported with a
fervent spirit of patriotism.
In the meantime, Giovanni Battista was developing a strong religious
vocation that reached its culmination when he was ordained to the priest-
hood in 1920. On this occasion, Luigi Sturzo sent him a telegram of con-
gratulations.12 After his ordination, Montini moved to Rome, where he
enrolled himself in the Faculty of Philosophy at the Pontifical Gregorian
University and, simultaneously, at the Faculty of Languages and Philosophy
at the University of La Sapienza, with the aim of enriching his humanis-
tic formation. Nevertheless, these academic endeavours, which were very
dear to the young Montini, were rapidly interrupted when the cardinal
Secretary of State, Pietro Gasparri, ordered him to join the Pontifical
Academy of Nobili Ecclesiastici—the institution where the diplomats of
the Vatican were formed. In May 1923 he was sent on a diplomatic mis-
sion to Warsaw, where he would stay for a period of six months. After his
return to Italy, in October 1924, he entered the Vatican’s State Secretariat,
where he would remain until he was designated archbishop of Milan thirty
years later. At the end of November 1923 he was nominated ecclesiastical
assistant of the Roman branch of the FUCI, and in 1925 he was elevated
to the rank of central ecclesiastical assistant of the organisation, a position
that he held until his departure in 1933.
Igino Righetti (1904–39)13 was a native of Rimini. He went to the liceo
Luigi Galvani of Bologna and from a very early age displayed an interest
and passion for social and political affairs. Initially, he was a follower of
the nationalistic youth movement. In 1921 he became secretary, in his
native Rimini, of the revitalised Popular University. In the period before
the Great War, the Popular University had been an institution inspired by
a socialist-democratic spirit and, during Righetti’s secretariat, it changed
to an organisation that, although not formally religious, was respectful of
religion. Righetti rapidly developed the qualities that were later to make
8 J. DAGNINO
him well known in his period as president of the FUCI, namely his abili-
ties as a cultural organiser and leader that allowed him to convince persons
much older than himself, and of diverse ideological views to collaborate in
the activities of the Popular University.
In the academic year 1922–23, he enrolled in the Faculty of Law at the
University of Bologna, though there is no evidence that he participated
in the activities of the local FUCI chapter during his stay in the city.14 In
January 1924 he relocated to the University of Rome to continue his law
studies. While living in the capital he continued his collaboration with his
native Rimini, this time as contributor to the Catholic periodical L’Ausa.
He also participated as secretary of the Diocesan Assembly of Catholic
Action at Rimini, of which he was for a brief period also president. While in
Rome, the young Igino Righetti became acquainted with Father Giovanni
Genocchi, who was actively involved in the life of the Roman branch of
the FUCI, and who convinced Righetti to join the FUCI at the beginning
of the academic year 1924–25, of which he would become the national
president after the national congress of September 1925 in Bologna.
Before dealing with the principal outcomes of this research, it might
be useful to provide some basic data regarding the FUCI. With regard
to the social background of the fucini, the overwhelming majority came
from the educated middle classes.15 Furthermore, many of the students
did not come from the structures of Catholic Action but were recruited
directly at the university level. Indeed, most of them had been educated in
state schools rather than in private and confessional ones, a feature which
distinguished the students from the other branches of the lay organisation.
Another interesting feature of the Catholic university students was that
proportionately few of its members enrolled themselves at the Catholic
University of Milan of Father Agostino Gemelli.16
The FUCI was present throughout Italy, but its principal strongholds
were in Lombardy, Venetia, Emilia Romagna, Campania, Puglia, and
Sicily. In 1928, the FUCI had 48 branches in the north, 23 in central Italy,
and 15 in the south. These numbers had risen by 1942–43 to 64 groups
in the north, 43 in central Italy, and 66 in the south. In the academic year
1928–29, the federation was composed of 2370 members, a figure which
rose in the years 1946–47 to 7055, in line with the overall growth of uni-
versity students on the peninsula. During the 1930s, the all-male branch
of the FUCI was able to recruit around 5 % of the whole Italian univer-
sity population, while the female branches of the association were able to
enlist 10 % of all young women who attended higher education.17 As such,
INTRODUCTION 9
Notes
1. Histories of the Italian Catholic Action and more broadly of Italian
Catholicism in the modern era abound. See, for example, D.I. Kertzer, The
Pope and Mussolini. The Secret History of Pius XI and the Rise of Fascism in
Europe (Oxford, 2014); J. Pollard, The Papacy in the Age of Totalitarianism,
1914–1958 (Oxford, 2014); L. Ceci, Il Vaticano e l’Italia di Mussolini
(Rome and Bari, 2013); J. Pollard, ‘Pius XI’s Promotion of the Italian
Model of Catholic Action in the World-Wide Church’, Journal of
Ecclesiastical History, 63/4 (2012), 758–84; idem, Catholicism in Modern
Italy. Religion, Society and Politics since 1861 (London and New York,
2008); F. Traniello, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale. Dal Risorgimento
al secondo dopoguerra (Bologna, 2007); A. Acerbi (ed.), La Chiesa e
l’Italia. Per una storia dei loro rapporti negli ultimi due secoli (Milan,
2003); G. Verucci, La Chiesa cattolica in Italia dall’Unità a oggi
1861–1998 (Rome and Bari, 1999); E. Preziosi, Obbedienti in piedi. La
vicenda dell’Azione Cattolica in Italia (Turin, 1996); M. Casella, L’Azione
cattolica nell’Italia contemporanea (1919–1969) (Rome, 1992);
M. Guasco, Dal Modernismo al Vaticano II. Percorsi di una cultura religi-
osa (Milan, 1991); G. Penco, Storia della Chiesa in Italia nell’età contem-
poranea 1919–1945 (Milan, 1985); A. C. Jemolo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia.
Dalla unificazione agli anni settanta (Turin, 1977); P. Scoppola, La Chiesa
e il fascismo. Documenti e interpretazioni (Bari, 1971) and D. A. Binchy,
Church and State in Fascist Italy (Oxford, 1941).
2. Aldo Moro, Giulio Andreotti, Paolo Emilio Taviani, Guido Gonella,
Giovanni Leone, Emilio Colombo, Mariano Rumor, Amintore Fanfani,
Mario Scelba, to name but just a few, were all active members of the FUCI.
3. For studies of the FUCI see T. Torresi, L’altra giovinezza. Gli universitari
cattolici dal 1935 al 1940 (Assissi, 2010); M. C. Giuntella, La FUCI tra
modernismo, partito popolare e fascismo (Rome, 2000); FUCI. Coscienza
universitaria, fatica del pensare, intelligenza della fede. Una ricerca lunga
100 anni (Milan, 1996); R.J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce. Catholic
Students in Fascist Italy (New York, 1990); R. Moro, La formazione della
classe dirigente cattolica (1929–1937) (Bologna, 1979); and G. Fanello
Marcucci, Storia della FUCI (Rome, 1971).
4. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica, 91.
5. While both Azione fucina and Studium essentially dealt with the same top-
ics in their pages, Studium, being a monthly journal could do so in more
depth and in a more scholarly fashion than could the weekly Azione fucina.
See A. Majo, La Stampa Cattolica in Italia. Storia e documentazione
(Casale Monferrato, 1992), 180–82.
INTRODUCTION 11
6. For the history of the FUCI previous to 1925 see, for example, R. J. Wolff,
Between Pope and Duce, 1–11, and G. Fanello Marcucci, Storia della FUCI,
17–115.
7. M. Casella, L’azione cattolica, 68–71.
8. For these incidents see, for example, M.C. Giuntella, La FUCI, 135–37;
R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica, 63–5 and G. Fanello
Marcucci, Storia della FUCI, 113–16.
9. There is a veritable publishing industry around the figure of Giovanni
Battista Montini-Paul VI, albeit of a very uneven scholarly value. See, for
example, F. De Giorgi, Mons. Montini. Chiesa cattolica e scontri di civiltà
nella prima metà del Novecento (Bologna, 2012); G. Adornato, Paolo
VI. Il coraggio della modernità (Milan, 2008); M. Mantovani and M. Toso
(eds.), Paolo VI. Fede, cultura, università (Rome, 2003); E. de la Hera, La
noche transfigurada. Biografía de Pablo VI (Madrid, 2002); A. Acerbi,
Paolo VI. Il papa che baciò la terra (Milan, 1997); J.L. González-Balado,
Vida de Pablo VI (Madrid, 1995); C. Cremona, Paolo VI (Milan, 1994);
P. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI. The First Modern Pope (New York, 1993);
Educazione, Intellettuali e Società in G.B. Montini-Paolo VI (Brescia,
1992); and Paul VI et la modernité dans l’Église (Rome, 1984).
10. On Giorgio Montini see A. Fappani, Giorgio Montini. Cronache di una
testimonianza (Rome, 1974).
11. On Father Giulio Bevilacqua see, for example, L’impegno religioso e civile di
p. Giulio Bevilacqua (Brescia, 1983) and A. Fappani, Padre Giulio
Bevilacqua prete e cardinale sugli avamposti (Verona, 1975).
12. G. Adornato, Paolo VI, 20.
13. On Igino Righetti, see G. Benzi and N. Valentini (eds.), Igino Righetti.
Una giovinezza pensante (1904–1939) (Rome, 2006); N. Antonetti, La
FUCI di Montini e di Righetti. Lettere di Igino Righetti ad Angela Gotelli
(1928–1933) (Rome, 1979); I. Righetti, Itinerari (Rome, 1959); and
A. Baroni, Igino Righetti (Rome, 1948).
14. A. Baroni, Igino Righetti, 24.
15. I have retrieved the following data from R. Moro, La formazione della
classe dirigente cattolica, 26ff.
16. Agostino Gemelli (1878–1959) was a tremendously powerful figure in
Fascist Italy. He converted to Catholicism in 1903, followed by his entry
into the Franciscan Order. He was ordained in 1908. In 1909 he founded
the Rivista di filosofia neoscolastica, followed in 1914 by the maiden issue of
Vita e Pensiero. He participated actively during the First World War as med-
ical captain and distinguished himself in the consecration of Italian soldiers
to the Sacred Heart. After the end of the conflict he saw the importance of
a Christianity-inspired political party. In 1919 he put forward an argument
that the PPI should be a confessional political organisation—a contention
12 J. DAGNINO
that was rejected. In 1921 he fulfilled one of his most cherished dreams
with the foundation of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan.
Additionally, Father Gemelli supported many of the stances of Mussolini’s
government. On Gemelli, see, for example, M. Bocci, Agostino Gemelli,
Rettore e Francescano. Chiesa, Regime, Democrazia (Brescia, 2003).
7. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica, 27.
1
PART 1
and that the world was nothing more than a ‘great wheel’ that had lost
its sense of mystery, enchantment, and beauty. He was deeply convinced
that ‘technology has petrified life and upset the scale of human values’.23
The crisis had been further deepened by the ever-growing presence of
anti-intellectual and irrationalistic tendencies present in contemporary
society. Gonella presented the modern world as a place over-populated
by men enslaved by the power of material interests and the allure of the
senses. Moreover, these men and women of the twentieth century were
frequently obsessed with utilitarian concerns like the ‘demon of business
and gain’, which had led to the divinisation of the practical over the specu-
lative life.24 This in turn had guided twentieth-century humanity, in the
social, literary, philosophical, political, and artistic realms, among others,
to a feverish and compulsive desire to start everything anew, breaking any
kind of link with previous traditions, in a hopeless effort to inaugurate a
utopian new world. Gonella had no doubts in speaking of the ‘pathologi-
cal character of this very modern mentality’.25
Guido Gonella was one of the Catholic intellectuals who developed a
systematic and logically coherent line of criticism of the modern world.
Giovanni Battista Montini was, perhaps, the other member of the FUCI
to conduct a systematic denunciation of the errors of contemporary
civilisation, although, as has been seen, he occasionally demonstrated a
degree of openness to modern society. Like Gonella and the anti-modern
Maritain, he located the origins of the disquiet of the modern world and
modernity in Luther—the ‘anti-teacher’, in Rousseau—the theorist of the
contemporary democratic regimes and ‘theoretician of the revolution’,
and finally in the subjectivism of Descartes. He bitterly commented on
how in the secular and rationalistic modernity ‘free enquiry, universal suf-
frage and systematic doubt’ had become dogmas that no one dared to
question,26 endangering the sole source of truth that was the Catholic
Church. Montini went on to distinguish between healthy and unhealthy
criticism. The former was an invaluable tool in every intellectual discipline,
while the latter constituted a ‘corruption’. Indeed, in criticism, the eccle-
siastical assistant saw the core of the modern world, a means transformed
into an end in itself, a ‘toxin’ that contaminated the men and women of
his time.27 Criticism for criticism’s sake had cut man off from the universal
truths that had to be rescued if the contemporary world were to be res-
cued from its ongoing predicament. But, in place of universal truths and
hierarchies of values, modern society exhibited a pitiful spectacle where
men and women wandered aimlessly and frenetically, giving free rein to
THE FUCI AND THE CONQUEST OF THE MODERN WORLD: 1925–1933 21
Notes
1. P. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI. The First Modern Pope (New York, 1993).
2. G. Adornato, Paolo VI. Il coraggio della modernità (Milan, 2008).
3. R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce. Catholic Students in Fascist Italy (New
York, 1990), 44–5.
4. G. B. Scaglia, La Stagione Montiniana. Figure e momenti (Rome, 1993),
20–1.
THE FUCI AND THE CONQUEST OF THE MODERN WORLD: 1925–1933 25
from the nineteenth century onwards. Above all, liberalism and social-
ism were decried for allegedly lacking a proper moral foundation. For the
fucini both currents of thought neglected the consideration that when
one dealt with economic and social realities, production problems, distri-
bution and consumption of wealth, among others, what was at stake and
most important of all was that they constituted human relationships and,
thus, ethical and spiritual issues above all.18
Furthermore, they decried the agnosticism of the liberal conception of
the state. In the Catholic intellectuals’ perspective, the liberal state had as
its sole and exclusive function the tutelage of liberties, the protection of
the rights of citizens, and the maintenance of public order. The Catholic
conception of the state was quite different. Besides the functions the lib-
eral version attributed to it, the Catholic one emphasised that it had to
provide a positive solution to every problem of public interest. In sum,
the state, according to the Catholic perspective, should not be limited to a
mere legal role as presented in its liberal form. It should manifest itself in
a propulsive, integrative, and coordinating activity of private energies and
endeavours towards the realisation of the common good.
Though socialism was criticised for its worship of the state, economic
and historic materialism, for wanting to abolish private property, and for
favouring class struggle and social strife in general, among other charac-
teristics, the fucini tended to be even harsher on liberalism. Economic
liberalism was judged to be a utopia, in the sense that it expected order
and prosperity to come from mere liberty alone. It was further attacked
for degrading human dignity as it allegedly treated human labour as some-
thing distinct and separate from the concrete man who worked and, also,
for its insatiable greed and concentration of capital that were threaten-
ing to world peace.19 Such comments were, however, routine in nature,
rehearsing long-established Catholic ideas. It was hostility to liberal
ideas—presented in a caricatured form—that constituted the central form
of the FUCI’s political mentality.
One advantage of this anti-liberalism was that it enabled the FUCI to
avoid commenting on the newly-established Fascist regime. One excep-
tion to this was, however, the way in which the FUCI commented on
statist authoritarianism elsewhere in Europe. Thus, the FUCI seized
upon the papal condemnation of the French Action Française movement
in 1926—‘France so republican that it causes nausea’, as Guido Gonella
vehemently wrote.20 Its leader, Charles Maurras, was condemned for
his ‘absolute atheism’ and ‘agnostic positivism’, and for propounding
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY OF GOD: POLITICS AND SOCIETY... 33
Corporativism
One manifestation of the FUCI’s concern to articulate an anti-liberal but
distinctly Catholic political ideology was its approach to corporativism.
During the 1925–33 period, corporativism was seen by many in the asso-
ciation as a third way to qualitatively overcome the errors and injustices
committed by liberalism and socialism, as well as providing a suitable
basis for the building of the Catholic state, where justice, political charity,
and solidarity would prevail. Above all, corporativism was destined in the
short run to regulate and achieve fair relationships between the diverse
social classes and groups, with the aim of diminishing the social conflicts
that produced those differences and injustices in the first place.23 Others
were seduced by corporativism because of its apparently ethical defence of
labour and labourers, and for the right of workers to associate in order to
advance their fair demands as purportedly happened in the modern trade
unions.24
With regard to Fascism’s version of corporativism25 there were mixed
reactions among the fucini during these years. For example, after the
introduction of the Carta del Lavoro (Labour Charter) in 1927, one
of the first documents in which Fascism expressed its corporativist doc-
trine, Catholic intellectuals reacted with some ambivalence. Luigi Civardi
criticised the excessive state intervention in economic and social matters
as a form of statolatry that was nothing other than a ‘derivation of the
Hegelian and pantheistic concept of the state’,26 which supposedly threat-
ened the Christian conception of liberty and syndicalism. Additionally,
Civardi expressed some concerns with regards to the state intervention
and the limitations imposed upon the right of association sanctioned by
the Carta del Lavoro. Finally, the writer of the FUCI press was highly
34 J. DAGNINO
Some historians have emphasised the enduring links between the Catholic
student federation and the PPI, at least during the initial period of the
Montini-Righetti administration.34 While it is true that many former lead-
ers of the FUCI had also been members of the Partito Popolare Italiano,
including Francesco Luigi Ferrari and Giuseppe Spataro, among others,
by the mid-1920s this was no longer the case. Moreover, the ideology
expressed in the FUCI’s publications reflected a broader rejection of the
principles of democratic party politics.
The differences between the FUCI of the 1925–33 period and the
ideas advanced by the PPI—established by Luigi Sturzo in 1919—were
substantial.35 For example, the preoccupation expressed by Sturzo for the
Mezzogiorno and its agrarian and artisanal structures received little to no
attention in the diverse FUCI branches of the period. Neither, as will
be seen, did the Catholic students warmly support the proportional elec-
toral system. Perhaps more importantly, Sturzo’s party stressed its nature
as a secular, a-confessional party, autonomous from the authority of the
church hierarchies—characteristics that were not in line with the political
and social thought expressed by the fucini during this period. It is true
that in 1919 Montini had written that ‘we want the programme of the PP
entirely … without concessions. We want in this programme all the justice,
all the living Christianity, all the social Gospel, all the real uplifting of the
people.’36 This has led American historian, Richard J. Wolff to conclude
that ‘unquestionably, Battista was himself a popolare at heart’.37 Although
at first glance this may seem a fairly obvious conclusion, we need to probe
further in order to understand Montini’s and the FUCI’s relationship to
the Partito Popolare Italiano. It has been seen that Montini grew up in a
family atmosphere where he got to know personally many leading politi-
cians of the PPI, and that his own father was a deputy of that party and its
leader in the Brescian area. However, he diverged in some crucial aspects
from the PPI platform. For example, the a-confessionalism preached by
Luigi Sturzo and the PPI was not shared by Montini, nor most in the
FUCI who saw in the church an essential component of national unity
and social development, capable of nurturing a new ruling class with close
ties to it. Additionally, the young Montini, unlike Sturzo, expressed strong
reservations with regard to extending the right to suffrage. In Montini’s
mind, this would only lead to people abusing their ignorance with the
36 J. DAGNINO
result of ‘lowering the intellectual and moral level of the country’. Rather
than entrusting the destinies of the nation to what he termed ‘a cultivated
and civilised class; the law would be dictated by men incapable of holding
such an office’.38 Moreover, in his positive evaluation of the PPI, Montini
tended to privilege a pre-eminently religious reading of the Sturzian
party, not a strictly political one. Indeed, in his vision he tried to deprive
the Partito Popolare Italiano as far as possible of its political underpin-
nings, instead assigning to it the role of religiously and morally uplifting
the masses.39 Furthermore, he differed from the PPI in its understand-
ing of political democracy. While for the latter it was an end in itself, for
Montini it was at best a means to an end, a relative value subject to histori-
cal circumstances and higher purposes. Speaking of Sturzo in particular,
Montini affirmed that ‘all his reasoning starts from the necessity or at least
the possibility that the parties exist as a result of the democratic concep-
tion of the state, that is of popular sovereignty’.40 For Montini, political
democracy could not be considered an irreplaceable form of government.
With regard to the resignation of Luigi Sturzo from the leadership of the
PPI at the suggestion of the Vatican in July 1923, although he spoke of
‘our militia’, he added significantly that the ‘banner has fallen. And it has
deserved to fall.’ He went on to comment that this defeat had no sem-
blance of ‘heroism’ and was ‘regrettably more due to internal divisions
than to external enemies’. Moreover, according to Montini, it represented
‘our radical incapacity to be coherent, united and strong in the ambit of
Italian public life’.41 At the bottom of this radical failure, Montini saw a
profound spiritual void, expressed in the tendency of the PPI to want to
act at every stage as something new, resting solely on their own will and
capacity to act, neglecting any connection with past traditions that could
link to the present the patrimony of past programmes and efforts.42 Thus,
what Montini criticised in Luigi Sturzo and the Partito Popolare Italiano
was its failure to act as a distinctively Catholic force and its failure to rec-
ognise that it should always put first the interests of the Holy See and the
church.
Another ambit in which there was a degree of difference between
Giovanni Battista Montini and the PPI was with respect to the Socialist
Party. While the PPI in 1924 demonstrated itself willing to make an alli-
ance with the Socialists in an effort to stop the apparently unbeatable
Mussolini, in 1919 Montini had pronounced very harsh words against
the Socialists: in his mind, they were ‘a current in which every putrid gut-
ter of anarchy, rebellion, immorality has been poured’.43 This, of course,
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY OF GOD: POLITICS AND SOCIETY... 37
Notes
1. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929–1937)
(Bologna, 1979), 66.
2. M. Marcocchi, ‘G.B. Montini. Scritti Fucini (1925–1933): Linee di
Lettura’ in Educazione, Intellettuali e Società in G.B. Montini-Paolo VI
(Brescia, 1992), 14.
3. M. C. Giuntella, La FUCI tra modernismo, partito popolare e fascismo
(Rome, 2000), 139–40.
4. R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce. Catholic Students in Fascist Italy (New
York, 1990), 134.
5. M. Nicoletti, ‘Società e Politica’ in Fuci. Coscienza universitaria, fatica del
pensare, intelligenza della fede. Una ricerca lunga 100 anni (Milan, 1996),
201.
6. Pius XI, Quas Primas, 11 December 1925 in Acción Católica Española,
Colección de Encíclicas y Cartas Pontificias (Buenos Aires, 1946), 318.
7. See above all the works by Daniele Menozzi: ‘Regalità sociale di Cristo e
secolarizzazione. Alle origini della “Quas Primas”’, Cristianesimo nella sto-
ria 16 (1995), 79–113: idem, ‘Liturgia e politica: l’introduzione della festa
40 J. DAGNINO
The relationship between the Fascist government and the FUCI led by
the Montini-Righetti administration was an uneasy one. While the major-
ity of the regional leaders of the association had no Fascist sympathies,
within the rank and file the situation, as has been seen, was different, as
many fucini were also members of the Fascist University Groups. With
Mussolini’s regime entrenched, the leaders of the organisation opted for a
line of cultural development and a strong presence in the life of Italian uni-
versities, trying, as much as possible, to refrain from entering into political
disputes.
However, despite this political abstentionism, relationships with Fascism
and in particular with the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (GUF) were trou-
blesome and full of frictions and incidents of violence during these years,1
due to the regime’s ambition to monopolise the nation’s youth and its
reluctance to tolerate the dual membership of so many Catholic students.
The most serious incidents of violence prior to the 1931 crisis occurred
during the scheduled national congress held at Macerata at the end of
August 1926.2 It proved to be ‘a baptism of fire’, according to the priest
Luciano Luciani.3 The fucini arrived at Macerata on the evening of 26
August, and the first episodes of violence occurred when some Genovese
students, who had just got off their train, encountered the violence of
a group of gufini. During the proceedings of the congress several stu-
dents were attacked, seven of them in a particularly violent fashion, leaving
them with severe wounds. Moreover, all of this happened with the police
watching unperturbed and without the slightest intention of intervening
to stop the attacks. Some Catholic students were even arrested. In the
end, the organisers of the congress were forced to suspend it and hurriedly
escaped to Assisi.4 All of these events led the bishop of Macerata to write
personally to Mussolini complaining about the situation that the fucini
had endured at the national congress. He did not hesitate in calling the
culprits ‘delinquents’, commenting that he had been left ‘nauseous at the
barbarian spectacle’ and that all of the incidents had been premeditated
by the Fascists.5
forms but ‘through the religious and political conscience of the Italian
people’.19 Moreover, the fucini resolutely affirmed that the concordat
brought as a consequence a radical modification, if not a total elimination,
of the cherished Fascist principle of the Ethical State which stood at the
root of Fascism’s self-conception as a totalitarian system. According to
these Catholic intellectuals, the conception of a state that viewed itself as
the source and primal and ultimate cause of morality and which purported
to absorb every individual’s liberties, had been transcended and rendered
defunct by the signing of the concordat.20
Naturally, the interpretations given by these Catholic figures to the
Lateran Pacts worried the Fascist government and party, and more espe-
cially its most radical fringes. The first attacks came from the periodical Il
lavoro fascista, whose editor—Gherardo Casini—accused Catholic Action
of ‘invading the field of the syndical and corporative order of Fascism’.21
In an article that was published some days later, Casini accused Catholic
Action of allegedly carrying out undercover political activities with the
aim of ‘forming the leaders that tomorrow could replace the ruling class
of Fascism’.22 However, what caused the already delicate situation to dete-
riorate was the speech delivered in Milan on 19 April 1931 by the sec-
retary of the party, Giovanni Giurati. Giurati focused on the problem of
the education of youth, denouncing the ‘gross manoeuvre’ undertaken
by some sectors of Italian Catholicism at the expense of Fascism, adding
menacingly that ‘the Concordat had been signed between the Holy See
and the totalitarian regime and corporate state’.23 A few days later the sec-
retary of the GUF, Carlo Scorza, denounced the assumed political goals of
the FUCI.24 In a further article, Scorza compared Fascism to the Catholic
Church, as an ideal model of intransigence to which the young Fascists
should seek to emulate in their political behaviour:
The hatred for the enemies of the Fatherland and Fascism that we preach
is the noblest form of defence of our Idea, which is a religious idea, and
that draws its profound inspiration from the greatest and wisest teacher that
history recalls: the Catholic Church … We refer to the truly constructive
aspect of Catholicism, that of the eternal mainstays, of the great Saints, of
the great Popes, great bishops, great missionaries: politicians and warriors
who drew the spade and the cross and used indifferently the stake and the
excommunication, poison and torture…always in the name of the power
and glory of the Church … Fascism must take its inspiration from this great
school of intransigence.25
50 J. DAGNINO
In contrast, the FUCI received the encyclical with relief and as a sign
of support for their cause from the Holy See. However, among some of
its members, who were convinced Catholics and Fascists at the same time,
the events of 1931 provoked a deep crisis of conscience. A fucino from
Milan, for example, confessed that he had enrolled in the Catholic stu-
dents’ association attracted by the ‘spirituality of its programme and its
apolitical character’, but added shortly afterwards that the ‘aims of the
FUCI did not respond to these predetermined goals and were in contrast
with my Fascist spirit’.38
The clash over the youth groups of Catholic Action was reaching a
dangerous climax, and neither side had much to gain from a definitive
break in their relationship. That is why negotiations started between the
Holy See and the Italian government intended to finally bring a end to the
crisis of 1931. These concluded with the September Accords of that year.
These established that Catholic Action was essentially diocesan in nature
and dependent upon the bishops, who were charged with the selection of
the directors, both ecclesiastical and lay, who could not belong to parties
that in the past had been hostile to the regime. Furthermore, the accords
excluded from the goals of Catholic Action the constitution of profes-
sional associations and trade unions. Finally, the agreements stipulated
that the local associations should henceforth refrain from any athletic or
sporting activity.39
In general, the September Accords received a lukewarm reaction from
the various FUCI branches. Even the ever-optimistic Igino Righetti wrote
that ‘the future path of our dear FUCI will proceed among great obsta-
cles’.40 Perhaps it was the Genoese leader Luigi Grondona who was most
outspoken in his rejection of the September Accords, expressing a deep
sense of disillusionment, anger and even betrayal by the highest authorities
of Catholic Action and the Vatican. He qualified the September Accords as
a ‘Josephinistic concession’ that left with him a profound ‘sense of repul-
sion’. He added that the apex of Catholic Action and the Vatican had
pursued a ‘politics of opportunism and compromise’ that led to nothing
else than the spiritual impoverishment of Catholicism.41
According to Renato Moro, the crisis of 1931 signified for the Catholic
intellectuals’ association in the medium to long term a decisive withdrawal
from their previous presence in Italian society and culture during the
1930s.42 It would seem, however, that he was mistaken. It would be pre-
cisely after the departure of Giovanni Battista Montini in 1933 that the
FUCI started exploring new cultural avenues, confronting the principal
THE FUCI AND FASCISM, 1925–33 53
the authority of the state is to put it at the mercy of most domineering fac-
tions.’46 He further attacked this monopolistic concept and appropriation
of the concept of nationhood present in Italian Fascism in an article writ-
ten for La Fionda, where the young Montini expressed his disapproval of
il Duce’s government: ‘He who bears for party-political motives a patriotic
exclusivism, has not comprehended the fundamental idea of Roman civili-
sation. He who separates himself from his other fellow citizens presuming
to love more the motherland, essentially neglects its universalistic concept.
He who makes of a beloved idea a weapon of hatred, dominion, intoler-
ance, truly does not love that idea.’47
When Montini became central ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI in
1925, his views on the Italian totalitarian experiment did not change. In
November 1926 he wrote that ‘Fascism will die of indigestion if it contin-
ues like this and it will be defeated by its own arrogance.’48 It was natu-
ral that he viewed negatively the rapidly growing relationships between
the Vatican and the Fascist government. These, as is known, would reach
their culmination with the signing of the Lateran Pacts in February 1929.
Unsurprisingly, Montini expressed a very negative view of these agree-
ments. Above all, the ecclesiastical assistant saw in these pacts the real
possibility of a loss of spiritual freedom for the Holy See and for Italian
Catholics, with the replacement of the latter with a liberty of a legal nature.
What was at stake was the moral force of Catholicism in Italian society. In
a letter to his family less than a month before the signing of the historical
agreements, he bitterly and worriedly commented:
In recent days there has been a great rumour about an alleged and imminent
solution to the Roman Question; and the solution … does not appear with-
out a certain ridiculous aspect for both sides: was it worthwhile to protest
for sixty years … for such a meagre result? And was it valuable to make such
statements of independence then to surrender on the territorial principle? …
If the freedom of the Pope is not guaranteed by the strong and free faith of
the people, and especially by the Italian one, what territory and what treaty
will be able to do so?49
of an organisation like the FUCI after the Lateran Pacts. He spoke of the
temptation of ‘having more faith in the aid of external circumstances than
in the intimate nature of truth itself’, adding that what was principally in
danger was that Catholicism could lose its moral and religious identity in
‘pacifist’ and ‘opportunistic’ tendencies.50
When the FUCI was dissolved in the midst of the crisis of 1931,
Giovanni Battista Montini sadly commented: ‘What a sorrow! What a
humiliation for our country!’51 And when the crisis was resolved with
the pacts of September 1931, Montini held no illusions. For him, the
‘Second Reconciliation’ was ‘a dangerous form of courtesy, that goes far
beyond the alliance and the defence of the agreed pact’.52 In a letter to
the president of the FUCI, Igino Righetti, he further commented that
the September Accords had not been ‘a dignified epilogue’ to the crisis.53
Given this general background, the obvious question that comes to
mind is how far the general ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI compre-
hended the central tenets of the Fascist experiment. The centrepiece of
Montini’s political attitudes was his mistrust towards the emergence of
mass politics in contemporary society—something that had inevitable
repercussions on his understanding of Fascism, which was underscored
by his strong moralistic formation. This had much to do with his cultural
and political origins and upbringing. His family came from the established
Brescian high bourgeoisie that shared many common traits with the aris-
tocracy of the time. This cultural and political tradition viewed with con-
cern the development of the new mass society, its inevitable consequences
for the social structures of the day, and the loss of the bourgeoisie’s cul-
tural influence. In this sense, Montini could not fully appreciate the novel
and modern nature of the Fascist totalitarian experiment and its appeal
to a mass-based society. Furthermore, he did not completely perceive the
diverse processes of modernisation that accompanied this nascent mass
society, such as the spread of rationalism and secularisation, expanding
literacy rates and social mobility, urbanisation and industrialisation, the
emergence of the urban middle and working classes, bureaucratisation,
revolutionary developments in communications and transports, and ever
more powerful technology and technocracy, to name a few. All of these
combined to bring about a burgeoning change in the value system and
material conditions of men’s and women’s lives during this period.
By contrast, Montini’s youthful experience developed between the old
liberal world and the beginning of the Fascist government. Legacies of
the liberal world view can be seen in his criticisms of Fascist nationalism.
56 J. DAGNINO
Notes
1. For example, in March 1926, the FUCI was obliged by the state authori-
ties to suspend a meeting they had planned in Bergamo. See G. Fanello
Marcucci, Storia della FUCI (Rome, 1971), 120.
2. For the incidents of violence that took place at Macerata see R. J. Wolff,
Between Pope and Duce. Catholic Students in Fascist Italy (New York,
1990), 48–52; R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica
(1929–1937) (Bologna, 1979), 69–73; G. Fanello Marcucci, Storia della
FUCI, 121–123 and A. Baroni, Igino Righetti (Rome, 1948), 74–5.
3. Letter from Luciani to Righetti in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b.
‘Assistenti 1925–40’. Montini spoke of an ‘Anabasis I will not forget in a
THE FUCI AND FASCISM, 1925–33 59
long time’. See G. B. Montini, Lettere ai familiari (Brescia, 1986), letter
to his parents dated 30 August 1926.
4. See the extensive memorandum written by Igino Righetti dated 4
September 1926 in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Rapporti con
Giac e GUF’ and ‘Macerata-Assisi’ and ‘Cronache del Congresso.
Macerata-Assisi’, both in Studium, 9 (1926).
5. See letter in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Rapporti con GIAC
e GUF’, 28 August 1926.
6. F. J. Coppa, ‘Mussolini and the Concordat of 1929’ in idem (ed.),
Controversial Concordats. The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini,
and Hitler (Washington, DC, 1999), 88, and D. M. Smith, Mussolini. A
Biography (New York, 1982), 159.
7. For more detailed accounts of the negotiations that would lead to the sign-
ing of the Lateran Pacts see, for example, J.F. Pollard, The Vatican and
Italian Fascism. 1929–32. A study in conflict (Cambridge, 1985), 27–48,
and D. A. Binchy, Church and State in Fascist Italy (Oxford, 1941),
167–221.
8. An English translation of the full text of the Lateran Accords can be found
in J.F. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 197–215.
9. B. Mussolini, Opera Omnia (Florence, 1958), XXIV, 45–6.
10. Ibid., 75–6.
11. Ibid., 89.
12. D. Bertetto (ed.), Discorsi di Pio XI (Turin, 1960), ii, 78.
13. For the crisis of 1931 over Catholic Action and the FUCI see, for example,
E. Gentile, Contro Cesare. Cristianesimo e totalitarismo nell’epoca dei fas-
cismi (Milan, 2010), 219–30; M. Casella, Stato e Chiesa in Italia dalla
Conciliazione alla riconciliazione (1929–1931) (Lecce, 2005), 273–456;
E. Preziosi, Obbedienti In Piedi. La vicenda dell’ Azione Cattolica in Italia
(Turin, 1996), 165–74; M. C. Giuntella, Autonomia e Nazionanalizzazione
dell’Università. Il fascismo e l’inquadramento degli Atenei (Rome, 1992),
231–74; R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce, 89–120; J. F. Pollard, The
Vatican and Italian Fascism, 133–66; Chiesa, Azione Cattolica e Fascismo
nel 1931 (Rome, 1983); R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cat-
tolica, 163–92. For the actions of the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (GUF)
or Fascist University Groups in the crisis of 1931 see L. La Rovere, Storia
dei GUF. Organizzazione, politica e miti della gioventù universitaria fas-
cista, 1919–1943 (Turin, 2003), 159–73.
14. M. C. Giuntella, Autonomia e Nazionalizzazione dell’Università, 252.
15. R. Manzini, ‘Passo di corsa’, L’Avvenire d’Italia, 3 August 1930.
16. g.g., ‘Le due Rome’, Azione fucina, 21 April 1929.
17. N. Antonetti (ed.), La FUCI di Montini e di Righetti. Lettere di Igino
Righetti ad Angela Gotelli (1928–1933) (Rome, 1979), 104.
60 J. DAGNINO
18. Adriano Bernaregggi, ‘Chiesa e Stato (I vari aspetti del problema)’, Studium,
8–9 (1929).
19. La Redazione, ‘11 Febbraio 1929’, Studium, 2 (1929). See also La
Redazione, ‘La fine dell’anticlericalismo’, Studium, 3 (1929), where the
Lateran Pacts were depicted as a promise of ‘spiritual resurrection given to
the Italian people’.
20. N.P.F., ‘Valutazione storica del concordato’, Studium, 3 (1929).
21. G.C., ‘Professionisti cattolici o cattolici di professione?’, Il lavoro fascista,
19 March 1931.
22. G.C., ‘Manovre cattoliche’, Il lavoro fascista, 26 March 1931.
23. See the speech in Il Popolo d’Italia, 21 April 1931.
24. C. Scorza, ‘Note chiarissime’, Gioventù fascista, 26 April 1931.
25. C. Scorza, ‘Odiare i nemici, Risposta all “Osservatore romano”’, Gioventù
fascista, 12 April 1931. This article provoked a vehement reaction from
one of the leaders of the Genoese FUCI, Luigi Grondona. See his letter to
Igino Righetti, dated 22 May 1931 in Archivio Luigi Grondona.
26. PIUS PP.XI, ‘Una lettera al Card. Schuster’, Azione fucina, 3 May 1931.
27. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale
Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati (1920–1945), b. 151.
28. Memorandum dated 7 April 1931 in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI,
b. ‘Materiale 1931/33’.
29. ‘Convegni sospesi’, Azione fucina, 19 April 1931. In another memoran-
dum, dated 18 May 1931, Igino Righetti detailed further incidents,
including the invasion of the FUCI chapter of Parma with the ensuing
destruction of its furniture, the offences and threats at the Catholic branch
of Rome, the suspension of the university Easter at the University of Rome
and, finally, public manifestations of hostility towards the FUCI in Cesena,
Forlì, Camerino and Turin. The memorandum can be found in Archivio
della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Rapporti con GIAC e GUF’.
30. See undated letter in Archivio Luigi Grondona.
31. Letter of Ugo Piazza, dated 8 May 1931 in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Vaticano. Commissione Episcopale. Enti Ecclesiastici, 1939–1945’.
Ugo Piazza was then the president of the Roman FUCI chapter.
32. ‘La Parola di Sua Santità agli Universitari Cattolici Italiani’, L’Osservatore
Romano, 21 May 1931.
33. R. De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Turin,
1996), 258–9.
34. A. Baroni, Igino Righetti, 104.
35. Pius XI, Non Abbiamo Bisogno, 29 June 1931, in Acción Católica Española,
Colección de Encíclicas y Cartas Pontificias (Buenos Aires, 1946), 887–88.
36. Ibid., 894–5.
THE FUCI AND FASCISM, 1925–33 61
37. Berto Ricci, ‘Risposta all’ultima enciclica’, L’Universale, July 1931. On this
interesting Fascist intellectual, see P. Buchignani, Un Fascismo Impossibile.
L’eresia di Berto Ricci nella cultura del ventennio (Bologna, 1994).
38. Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Partito Nazionale Fascista, Direttorio
Nazionale, Segreteria dei GUF, b. 30, letter to the secretary of the GUF,
3 June 1931.
39. The full text of the September Accords can be found in J. F. Pollard, The
Vatican and Italian Fascism, 216.
40. Letter from Righetti to Angela Gotelli, 11 September 1931 in N. Antonetti
(ed.), La FUCI di Montini e di Righetti, 262.
41. Letter from Luigi Grondona to Igino Righetti, 4 October 1931, in
Archivio Luigi Grondona.
42. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica, 194–5.
43. On Giorgio Montini see A. Fappani, Giorgio Montini. Cronache di una
testimonianza (Rome, 1974).
44. A. Fappani and F. Molinari, Giovanibattista Montini giovane, 1897–1944.
Documenti inediti e testimonianze (Turin, 1979), 100.
45. G. B. Montini, Lettere ai familiari, 15 July 1923, 232.
46. Montini to his family, 2 September 1923, in ibid., 250.
47. G.B.M., ‘Osservazioni elementary sul patriottismo’, La Fionda, 5
September 1923.
48. G. B. Montini, Lettere ai familiari, letter to his family, 4 November 1926,
440.
49. Montini to his family, 19 January 1929, in ibid., 583.
50. G.B.M., ‘Ai fucini: parole buone dopo fatti grandi’, Azione fucina, 24
February 1929.
51. Montini to his family, 30 May 1931, in G. B. Montini, Lettere ai familiari,
686.
52. Cited in A. Fappani and F. Molinari, Giovannibattista Montini giovane,
278.
53. Letter to Righetti, 15 September 1931, in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza 1933/35’.
54. For Fascism’s evolution of the concept of nationalism see, above all,
E. Gentile, La Grande Italia. Il mito della nazione nel XX secolo (Rome
and Bari, 2006), 157–241.
55. g.b.m., ‘Tradizione e Storicismo’, Studium, 7–8 (1927).
56. On Luigi Sturzo’s comprehension of Fascism as a political religion see
E. Gentile, Contro Cesare, 142–51 and 190–200.
57. ‘Le dimissioni di Mons. Montini’, Azione fucina, 12 March 1933.
58. See, for example, G. Fanello Marcucci, Storia della FUCI, 150.
59. For Montini’s ousting from office see, for example, G. Adornato, Paolo
VI. Il coraggio della modernità (Milan, 2008), 28–32; E. de la Hera, La
62 J. DAGNINO
The departure of Montini in 1933 was a severe blow for many in the
association. Unquestionably, the FUCI in the post-Montini-Righetti era
came under closer scrutiny by the Italian hierarchy and adopted warmer
attitudes to the Fascist government, leaving behind the cautious a-fascism
of the previous administration; that is, the attitude of trying to refrain as
much as possible from the political vicissitudes of the day. Righetti would
still remain in the presidency of the organisation for the remainder of 1933
and part of 1934. However, he would face ever-growing pressures from
other branches of Catholic Action and the hierarchy that had traditionally
viewed with suspicion the activities of the association. Undoubtedly, the
federation—in more respect than one—was in crisis, its very essence and
mission being called into question. Significantly, this situation derived not
from burgeoning conflicts with the regime and its youth organisations,
but from within the Catholic camp itself. According to Renato Moro,
what was at stake were differing and opposing conceptions of the nature
and goals of Catholic Action and of its intended presence in Italian society.
On the one hand, Righetti, Costa, and other exponents of the Montinian
line espoused the patient and slow work of the religious and cultural for-
mation of an elite, withdrawing as much as possible from the political
vicissitudes of the day, whereas the vast majority of the national hierarchy
supported the notion of a mass presence of the Catholic laity in search of
immediate political success.1 In the post-1931 climate of increasingly close
I have the distinct impression that in Milan the FUCI is barely tolerated by
our superior authorities, Cardinal included … all our ideas are systematically
rejected. For the fucini, His Eminence is always busy and can never visit
them. This however, does not happen to the gufini, who are becoming the
favoured sons.2
However, it was the case of Montini that most suitably describes this grow-
ing sense of isolation. Having been forced to resign, he was forbidden to
preach at the various branches that invited him to act as a speaker at FUCI
gatherings. He would never again write for Azione fucina, and it would
be more than two years before he would pen an article for Studium—now
the journal of the newly created Movimento Laureati.
In the face of these problems and, as we shall see, of growing resistance
within the FUCI itself, Righetti decided to step aside and leave the organ-
isation he had presided over for nearly nine years. In November 1934,
Giovanni Ambrosetti was designated as its new president. Ambrosetti was
only a second-year law undergraduate from Milan and was almost entirely
unknown in FUCI branches. He had no personal or organisational ties
with the previous administration, so his designation was seen, in some
quarters, as a further blow to the Montini-Righetti line.
After his departure from the FUCI, Righetti fulfilled a long-cherished
dream of his and Montini’s: the establishment of the Movimento Laureati,
the association for Catholic university alumni.3 Before the existence of the
movement, Catholic alumni had had serious difficulties in continuing with
the work and spirit of the FUCI after completing their studies. They were
presented with the dilemma of either joining what they saw as rather pietis-
tic and not very intellectually challenging adult section of Catholic Action,
the Uomini cattolici, or leave the lay organisation altogether, which many
did. Although the laureati preserved to a larger degree the Montini line,
for the purposes of this study they will be treated jointly with the FUCI
A PATH TO MODERNITY: THE FUCI IN THE 1930S 67
as a common locus for intellectual and religious experience. Not only was
there a chronological and personnel continuity between the two, but the
similarities of their religious experience in what was perceived as epochal
times outweighed their occasional differences. Furthermore, the idea of a
continuum between the two associations was on the minds of its leaders
from the very beginning. Writing to Vittorio Branca, Righetti expressed
his intent in this respect: ‘For my part, push the affairs of the alumni as far
as possible, towards a logical and chronological continuity with the affairs
of the FUCI’.4
Several external factors during the 1930s contributed to make unvi-
able the prudent reserve that had characterised FUCI under Montini and
Righetti. Above all, it was determined by the new Italian political climate
of the decade. By then, the regime had largely consolidated itself, mak-
ing it increasingly difficult to foresee a collapse in the near future. These
were the ‘years of consensus’ as Renzo de Felice provocatively put it in the
mid-1970s:5 the years when ‘the trains ran on time’; when Italy won two
football World Cups; when the nation rallied around the Ethiopian adven-
ture of 1935; and when, apparently at least, the socio-economic situation
of the peninsula was strengthening.6
The regime also enjoyed a certain popularity for its foreign policy,
both in Italy and abroad. The coming to power of Hitler in 1933 made
Mussolini’s regime seem more ‘liberal’, even more ‘humane’. Additionally,
the Pact of Four, the Austrian incidents of 25 July 1934, and the Laval-
Mussolini accords contributed to some extent to giving Mussolini the
image of a peacemaker.7 In the face of this new reality, the Montini-
Righetti line was not only unviable but seemed increasingly a-historical
and dated, making, to some extent, inevitable the rapprochement of the
FUCI with the wider Italian political situation.
The support given by many in the association to some of the regime’s
policies during the 1930s has for long been considered as a sort of ‘Dark
Ages’ in the history of the federation, a parenthesis, or—worse—a betrayal
of its true ‘essence’, namely, the Montinian lesson. According to Richard
Wolff, during these years the FUCI lost its ‘reputation as a hard-line,
anti-Fascist group’ and a period when the ‘conservative forces among the
Catholic students further consolidated their influence and the indepen-
dence of the Montini and Righetti years seemed in danger of extinction’.8
For Wolff, the 1933–39 period was essentially a ‘stage of conformity’.9
More recently, Paul Misner has similarly argued that after 1933 the general
68 J. DAGNINO
climate in the FUCI was one ‘with no sympathy for the modernizing line’
of the previous administration.10
Instead, it is contended in this chapter that the 1930s, far from being a
time of conservatism or conformism, was a crucial period in the develop-
ment of an alternative form of Catholic modernity and, in this respect,
the encounter with some aspects of Fascism was a fruitful one, which also
enabled the FUCI to maintain an individual identity. The 1930s were a
pivotal time for the engagement of the church with such modern aspects of
life as technological advances, urbanisation, cinema, a more self-conscious
youth, new models of sainthood and religious behaviour, the tenets of
mass society, and major organisational developments within the structures
of the church that modified its traditional models of presence in society.11
Much of this depends of course on the meaning that one ascribes
to modernity. Much of the historiography of Catholicism has adopted
a self-consciously progressive approach to modernity. Both Wolff and
Misner, for example, make the rather common mistake in studies deal-
ing with Catholicism of analysing the relationship between Catholicism
and modernity by focusing on the relationship of Catholics to modern
liberal democracy and its values of civil and political liberties and plural-
ism. We are often led to believe that figures such as Ozanam, Cardinal
Manning, Maritain, and Mounier are ‘modern’ because of their optimistic
embracing of liberalism and progressive social reform, while the English
Catholic Hilaire Belloc is judged to be ‘reactionary’ and out of touch with
the times.12 Recently, Vincenzo Ferrone has identified in the supposed
‘discovery’ of the ‘rights of men’ that came to fruition under the Second
Vatican Council (1962–65)—anticipated by figures such as J. Maritain yet
again—the most lasting reconciliation with the modern world, leaving
behind decades of religious fundamentalism and intolerance.13
As applied to the case of Fascist Italy, this has often led scholars of mod-
ern Catholicism to privilege the before, that is the Popular Party of Luigi
Sturzo and the Catholic Social movement, and the after, centred around
the triumphant success of the Christian Democrats after the Second World
War, often reflecting on the period in between as an age of compromises
and passive conformity to the regime.
This approach, however, raises at least two objections that compro-
mise its interpretive strength. Firstly, it somewhat unwittingly introduces
modernity as an experience quintessentially extraneous to Catholicism,
obliging Catholics to face a choice between total rejection at the risk of
alienating themselves from the lives of their fellow men or the possibility
A PATH TO MODERNITY: THE FUCI IN THE 1930S 69
had been pivotal among Italian Nationalists, as it had been in the grandi-
ose palingenetic ambitions of futurists and the Florentine avant-garde.36
Youth became a metaphor for social and religious change, as a state of
purity and unity capable of overcoming the decadence of the old Italietta.
It became conventional to regard youth as embodying virility, dynamism,
activism and the flexibility required for living in the complexities of the
modern world. Mussolini, according to such a view, was responsible for
‘awakening youth and giving it an energetic breath, an impetus, a force’.37
Among the fucini there existed the certitude that the young were the
privileged agents in the construction of the new Italy, a Patria that would
once again occupy its deserved place in Europe.
To be sure, such a national perspective had not been entirely absent
during the 1925–33 period, though it was rarely developed by Montini
or his closest collaborators. Characteristic of the FUCI’s patriotic spirit
had been the emphasis it placed on the particular qualities of the Italian
people. They were depicted as having the virtue of clarity and luminosity
of thought, often using commonplaces such as Italy being ‘the land of the
sun’.38 Italians were not the victims of passions that obscured reason but a
nation where common sense ruled, the latter a virtue that did not under-
mine their powerful imagination and ideals. They were further applauded
for their high moral standards and sense of balance.39
Nevertheless, it would be during the 1930s that the ideal of a ‘Catholic
Italy’ really acquired momentum. This was the notion of an Italy essen-
tially and naturally Catholic, in which religion came to be seen as the
principal agent of personal and national regeneration.40 The 1930s were
a time when Catholics had the duty to be ‘Catholic citizens and not just
Catholics that happen to be citizens’.41 The Lateran Pacts were of central
importance in this respect; they were regarded by the vast majority of
Italian Catholics as the inauguration of a new era that radically broke with
the old and decadent liberal past, a new epoch that would render Italy
greater at home and abroad. Most Catholics welcomed the destruction of
the liberal state brought about by Fascism. As Pietro Scoppola has rightly
asserted, ‘Fascism presented itself as a possible and unexpected ally for the
Christian restoration of Italian society: the point of encounter could be
that of the construction of a national and Catholic state’.42 A more spiri-
tualised and more Christian people meant, for many at the time, a more
thoroughly and profoundly Italianised citizenry. The generous provisions
of the concordat that had ensured the existence and protection of Catholic
Action, as well as a dominant presence of religion in educational affairs,
74 J. DAGNINO
German racism was disavowed not for its intention of uplifting and purify-
ing its people but, rather, for resting on too narrow materialistic premises.
Catholics tended to avoid the use of the concept of ‘race’ in a determin-
istic sense when discussing these issues, opting instead for that of stirpe—
a highly ambiguous and polysemic term, meaning lineage, stock, and a
noble birth, but also race. For these Christians, it was above all a spiritual
and cultural construction that evolved from Italy’s rich historical and reli-
gious past. It was a vital and vigorous reality, a tangible manifestation
of Italy’s superior morality and civilisation. Demographic planning was
an expression of how Italians were progressively taking charge of ‘their
own destiny’.50 As such, Fascist biopolitics were welcomed for strengthen-
ing and defending the stirpe: ‘number is power and power expresses the
prestige and political intangibility of a nation’ and ‘racial hygiene’ was
paramount for a ‘healthy and fecund race’.51 They espoused ‘constructive
eugenics’ that renovated personal and collective hygiene.52 Race was to be
understood as a ‘vital force’53 and the ultimate aim was the ‘purification of
the generations’.54
In the religious elaboration of the concept of the nation, the Myth of
the Great War reached its peak as the beginning of a new era. In this sense,
the fucini, to a large extent, shared the views of Fascists, Nationalists,
futurists and others, in adopting what Emilio Gentile has termed the
vision of the Great War as an ‘apocalypse of modernity’.55 The archetypes
of palingenetic sacrifice, hierarchy, camaraderie in a common destiny and
the meaningfulness embedded in the experience of war, were all important
elements in this process. From catastrophe came renewal and, as Federico
Sargolini, who had been ecclesiastical assistant of the female branch of the
FUCI between 1925 and 1929, proclaimed that from the ashes of disaster
came a ‘purer and greater Italy’.56 The war had been a fight for the ‘expan-
sion of Italy’s civilisation … for the complete unity of Italy’, in sum, a ‘new
Italy had been born’.57
The great test for the Catholic conception of the nation and for the
church’s new-found optimism and triumphalism was the invasion of
Ethiopia in 1935 and the subsequent proclamation of the African Empire
the following year. This was the highest moment for the Fascist myth
of national regeneration.58 The conflict also marked the apex of Catholic
support given to Fascism, finding the overwhelming majority of the hier-
archy and other religious authorities united under the national banner.59
The Vatican, while cautious of not compromising itself with manifesta-
tions or declarations that could be interpreted as too unilateral, especially
76 J. DAGNINO
the desire for unity of life and thought, the modern aspiration to activism
and the awareness that knowledge to make sense had to be operative. It
was also the possibility to make history. In many ways, the fucini felt that
they were becoming citizens as well as believers, after the estrangement
from political affairs that had characterised the Righetti presidency. The
war, yet again, was viewed as a regenerative, revitalising, and rejuvenating
moment for a new Italy and Europe. Rodolfo Meomartini, a student from
Benevento, writing to Ambrosetti to congratulate him for the editorial
‘Italia in piedi’, expressed this sense of novelty, of being at the crossroads
of history: ‘I want to express our absolute solidarity with what has been
so nobly and patriotically expressed in the editorial “Italia in piedi!”. This
article, awaited for so long, fully synthesises our state of mind in this deci-
sive hour for the chances of the Fatherland.’ For Meomartini and many
others, there was no doubt. What was at stake was ‘the mission of civilisa-
tion of this New Italy, at the avant-garde of the Catholic and European
renaissance.’64
The undeniable support given to the Fascist enterprise, however, should
not be interpreted solely along a ‘clerical-fascist’ paradigm in which the
Catholic identity all but disappeared in a passive conformity to the regime’s
actions. Following what has been said about the ideal of a ‘Catholic Italy’,
determined action was necessary precisely in order not to be absorbed in
the turbulent times. The enterprise had to be channelled, directed and
given a Catholic role to be effective. Once again, the impotence of the
Montini-Righetti line emerges in this sense. As Augusto Baroni, one of
the leaders of the Bolognese laureati claimed, both an ‘absenteeism’ or a
‘servile and amorphous adhesion’ would render the intellectuals’ position
sterile.65 For Baroni, it was about having the courage to enter into his-
tory, with its torments and splendours, of leading a manly life in times of
crisis. In a letter of December 1935 to Augusto Ciriaci, the then president
of Catholic Action, he expressed his position and criticised the Righetti
stance: ‘When the hour is grave for the Fatherland … can Italian Catholics
be confined to the principle of mere obedience to the constituted pow-
ers and, not add anything … of their spontaneous and active adhesion?’
Baroni was convinced that, as Catholics and Italians, they could not preach
hatred to the enemy as Fascist propaganda mandated but, nevertheless,
‘love for the Fatherland pushes us to give for it everything that is possible,
everything that is imposed on us, everything that is requested from us and
also that which is neither imposed or asked for’.66
78 J. DAGNINO
Today, Italy has in Eastern Africa … its empire, because it recreates there
the Mussolinian principles of “living dangerously” and “believe, obey and
fight”: because it provides in the heart of Africa a sign of that civilisation
A PATH TO MODERNITY: THE FUCI IN THE 1930S 79
that is, in its positive essence, the Christian civilisation: because it intends
to deliver social equality and fraternal charity to peoples accustomed to the
arbitrary distinctions of races and castes.74
extinguished at last all the motives of interior dissent, banished among us the
fallacious ideologies that corrupt the lives of so many nations the new nation
could “show to the world and the centuries to come how the ‘Two Cities’,
the celestial, that of faith, eternal justice and the charity of Christ and, the ter-
restrial, that of the terrestrial Fatherland, of labour, of present history, have
on earth a vortex of common collaboration: that vortex is fixed in Rome”.75
Many years later, the fucino Vittorio Chesi would evoke the excitement
and feeling of a ‘new epoch’ being born when he went, as did so many
Italians of the time, to the Piazza Venezia to listen to the proclamation
of empire. Chesi, who had expressed some reservations regarding certain
aspects of Fascist ideology and whose family had personally been the vic-
tim of Fascist violence, nevertheless, could not escape this sense of novelty:
‘It was a moment of exaltation that I could not refrain from. The piazzas
with the open loudspeakers, the streets decked with flags. The speech was
continuously interrupted by a hurricane of applauses. I was present at a spec-
tacle that has never repeated itself: via IV Novembre, via del Plebiscito, via
del Corso, corso Vittorio Emmanuele, largo Argentina, were all invaded by a
tide of people drunk with enthusiasm. How can we deny it? At that moment
there was a complete identification between Fascism and the Fatherland.’76
Notes
1. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929–1937)
(Bologna, 1979), 303 ff.
2. Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza 1933/35’. For a
similar impression of other members of the hierarchy see the letter from
Franco Costa to Righetti in April 1934 in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Convegni di zona 1930/42’.
3. For this association, besides the many times quoted volume by Renato
Moro, see M.L. Paronetto Valier, Competenza e Responsabilità. Spiritualità
delle professioni (Rome, 2002); F. Casavola-P. Scoppola-R. Moro et.al,
In ascolto della storia. L’itinerario dei “Laureati cattolici” 1932–1982
(Rome, 1984); Il movimento Laureati di A.C. Appunti per una storia
80 J. DAGNINO
15. Not coincidentally, Stephen Kern entitled his now ‘classic’ study dealing
with these topics, first published in 1983, The culture of time and space
1880–1918 (Cambridge, Mass., 2003).
16. M. Berman, All that is solid melts into air. The experience of modernity (New
York, 1982), 13.
17. See the fine observations by E. Poulat in his Chiesa contro borghesia.
Introduzione al divenire del cattolicesimo contemporaneo (Casale
Monferrato, 1984), 231 ff and S. Stanford Friedman, ‘Definitional
Excursions: The meanings of Modern/Modernity/Modernism’, Modernism/
modernity 8/3 (2001), 493–513.
18. N. Zapponi, La modernità deviante (Bologna, 1993).
19. D. Hervieu-Léger,’Tendenze e contraddizioni della modernità europea’ in
La religione degli europei. Fede, cultura religiosa e modernità in Francia,
Italia, Spagna, Gran Bretagna, Germania e Ungheria (Turin, 1992), 3.
20. In recent years it has been, at least in the Anglo-Saxon world, the Australian
historian Richard J. Bosworth who has championed this view. See, for
example, his Mussolini’s Italy. Life under the dictatorship (London, 2005)
and his ‘Per necessità famigliare: Hypocrisy and Corruption in Fascist
Italy’, European History Quarterly 30/3 (2000), 357–87.
21. R. Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (London and New York, 2004), 12–13;
P. Morgan, Fascism in Europe, 1919–1945 (London and New York, 2003),
190–94 and R. Griffin, The Nature of Fascism (London, 1993), 47.
22. E. Gentile, ‘The Myth of National Regeneration in Italy: From Modernist
Avant-Garde to Fascism’ in M. Affron and M. Antliff (eds.), Fascist Visions.
Art and ideology in France and Italy (New Jersey, 1997), 25–45.
23. E. Gentile (ed.), Modernità totalitaria. Il fascismo italiano (Rome and
Bari, 2008).
24. G. L. Mosse, The Fascist Revolution. Toward a general theory of Fascism
(New York, 2000), 137–55. For the importance of the idea of future in
Fascist ideology see the fine observations by Pier Giorgio Zunino in his
L’ideologia del fascismo. Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione del
regime (Bologna, 1995), 122–29.
25. See his Modernism and Fascism. The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini
and Hitler (Basingstoke and New York, 2007), 54–5, 116–17 and 219–49.
26. G. L. Mosse, Masses and man. Nationalist and Fascist perceptions of reality
(Detroit, 1987), 11.
27. E. Gentile, Le origini dell’ideologia fascista 1918–1925 (Bologna, 1996),
3–49.
28. See her fine study Fascist Modernities. Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley, 2001),
4ff. The field of Fascism and modernity has been one of the most inten-
sively debated in recent years. Among other works see, for example,
C. Lazzaro and R.J. Crum (eds.), Donatello among the blackshirts. History
82 J. DAGNINO
and modernity in the visual culture of Fascist Italy (Ithaca and London,
2005); D. Settembrini, ‘Fascismo e modernità’ in A. Campi (ed.), Che cos’è
il fascismo. Interpretazioni e prospettive di ricerca (Rome, 2003), 375–406;
M. Antliff, ‘Fascism, Modernism and Modernity’, The Art Bulletin 84/1
(2002), 148–69; W.L. Adamson, ‘Avant-garde modernism and Italian
Fascism: cultural politics in the era of Mussolini’, Journal of Modern Italian
Studies 6/2 (2001), 230–48; idem, ‘Modernism and Fascism. The politics
of culture in Italy, 1913–1922’, American Historical Review, 95/2 (1990),
359–90 and E. Gentile, ‘The conquest of modernity. From modernist
nationalism to Fascism’, Modernism/modernity 1/3 (1994), 55–87.
29. For a lively and synthetic analysis of this mentality see, in a comparative
perspective, M. Conway, ‘Catholic politics or Christian Democracy?’, in
W. Kaiser and H. Wohnout, (eds.) Political Catholicism in Europe 1918–45
(London and New York, 2004), 235–51.
30. R. Moro, ‘La religione e la “nuova epoca”. Cattolicesimo e modernità tra
le due guerre mondiali’ in A. Botti and R. Cerrato (eds.), Il modernismo
tra cristianità e sedcolarizzazione (Urbino, 2000), 561.
31. Now in A. Bernareggi, Professione Cultura Società, (Rome, 1954), 9. This
is a collection of some of his articles, speeches and letters written between
1933 and 1953.
32. Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Presidenti 1920/46’.
Significantly, around the same time, even Righetti admitted that relations
with the GUF were all in all ‘good’ and so were the dealings with the gov-
ernment. See Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI,b. ‘Relazioni Autorità
Politiche e Accademiche’.
33. Aurelia Bobbio, ‘Recensioni’, Studium, 9 (1933).
34. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La professione da un punto di vista spirituale’,
Studium, 1 (1934).
35. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La moralità della professione’, Studium, 3–4 (1935).
Along similar lines, a fucino expressed his sentiment that in an otherwise
convoluted and decadent continent, they had to thank ‘the privilege of
being Italians, that is, of forming part of that healthy people that, in fas-
cism has immunised itself against the desire of extremist aberrations’. See
C. V, ‘La nostra responsabilità’, Azione fucina 26 July 1936.
36. See the fine study by W. L. Adamson, Avant-Garde Florence. From
Modernism to Fascism (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1993).
37. Giuseppe de Luca, ‘Dante vivo di Papini’, Studium, n.4 1933. For the
importance of the myth of youth and its organisations in Fascist Italy see, for
example, A. Gibelli, Il popolo bambino. Infanzia e nazione dalla Grande
Guerra a Salò (Turin, 2005); L. La Rovere, Storia dei GUF. Organizzazione,
politica e miti della gioventù fascista 1919–1943 (Turin, 2003); R. Ben-Ghiat,
Fascist modernities, 93ff; L. Malvano, ‘The Myth of youth in images: Italian
A PATH TO MODERNITY: THE FUCI IN THE 1930S 83
49. For Italian Catholic attitudes to these topics see R. Maiocchi, Scienza itali-
ana e razzismo fascista (Florence, 1999), 149–57.
50. Guido Lami, ‘Finalità biologica e demografia’, Azione fucina, 19 December
1937.
51. Arturo Arrigoni, ‘Il compito del medico nella società moderna’ in Aspetti
del problema demografico. 2do quaderno della rivista Studium per I medici,
June 1938, 8–9.
52. Ibid., 15.
53. Guido Lami, ‘Il problem demografico dal punto di vista biologico’, in
ibid., 63. Guido Lami, Professor of Pathology at the University of Pavia
and active member of the laureati went on to praise ‘the formidable exam-
ple of Nazi Germany’ as a case of how the human will could shape and alter
demographic patterns.
54. Nello Palmieri, ‘Eugenica distruttiva ed eugenica costruttiva’ in ibid., 45.
55. E. Gentile, L’Apocalisse della modernità. La grande Guerra per l’uomo
nuovo (Milan, 2008). Also useful are M. Isnenghi, Il mito della Grande
Guerra (Bologna, 1989) and G. L. Mosse, Fallen soldiers. Reshaping the
memory of the world wars (New York, 1991).
56. F. Sargolini, in the preface to G. Bistolfi, Gioventù nostra (Rome, 1933),
5. This popular interwar volume consists of biographical profiles of
Catholic youth fallen during the Great War.
57. Lina Sorrento, ‘La grande guerra nella poesia popolare italiana’, Azione
fucina, 21 February 1937 and Augusto Baroni, ‘L’ufficiale educatore dei
suoi uomini’, Azione fucina, 14 December 1941.
58. See the excellent analysis offered by R. Ben-Ghiat in her Fascist moderni-
ties, 123–30.
59. In this sense, see the very eloquent primary source material offered by
E. Rossi, Il manganello e l’aspersorio. La collusione fra il Vaticano e il regime
fascista nel Ventennio (Milan, 2000), 215–49 and G. de’Rossi dell’Arno,
Pio XI e Mussolini (Rome, 1954), 69–127. The bibliography on the
involvement of Catholics in the Ethiopian adventure is unsurprisingly very
extensive but see, for example, L. Cecia, ‘La Chiesa e la questione colo-
niale: Guerra e missione nell’impressa d’Etiopia’ in M. Franzinelli and
R. Bottoni (eds.), Chiesa e Guerra. Dalla “benedizione delle armi” alla
“Pacem in terris” (Bologna, 2005), 321–56; G. Miccoli, Fra mito della
cristianità e secolarizzazione, 112–30; P. Scoppola, Coscienza religiosa e
democrazia nell’Italia contemporanea (Bologna, 1966), 362–418;
G. Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici, 111–23; G. Penco, Storia della Chiesa
in Italia nell’età contemporanea 1919–1945 (Milan, 1986), 142ff; and
D. Saresella, ‘Le riviste cattoliche italiane di fronte alla Guerra d’Etiopia’,
Rivista di storia contemporanea, 19/3 (1990), 447–64.
A PATH TO MODERNITY: THE FUCI IN THE 1930S 85
60. For the complex and, at times ambiguous stances of Pius XI see
M. Agostino, Le Pape Pie XI et l’opinion (1922–1939) (Perugia, 1991),
551–74; A. Giovagnoli, ‘Il Vaticano di fronte al colonialismo fascista’ in
A. Del Boca (ed.), Le guerre coloniali del fascismo (Rome and Bari, 1991),
112–31; and A. Rhodes, The Vatican in the age of the dictators (1922–1945)
(New York, Chicago and San Francisco, 1973), 69–78.
61. In Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Cons. Sup. Verbali 1926/40’.
62. For the importance and novelty of the military metaphor in interwar
Italian Catholicism, see F. De Giorgi, ‘Linguaggi totalitari e retorica
dell’intransigenza: Chiesa, metafora militare e strategie educative’ in
L. Pazzaglia (ed.), Chiesa, cultura e educazione in Italia tra le due guerre
(Brescia, 2003), 55–103.
63. XX, ‘Italia in piedi!’, Azione fucina, 6 October 1935.
64. Letter of 18 0ctober 1935, in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b.
’Presidenza 1933/35’.
65. Letter to Righetti, 31 October 1935 in Archivio del Movimento Laureati,
b. ‘1935 n.1’. Augusto Baroni (1897–1967) was a volunteer during the
First World War, an experience that would leave in him a very strong patri-
otic spirit. He was an active member in the Bolognese branch of the
Movimento Laureati. He would support many Fascist enterprises while
attempting to maintain a sense of a specific Catholic identity. After the fall
of Fascism, he devoted his life as a university professor at Bologna.
66. Baroni sent a copy of this letter to Righetti. See Archivio del Movimento
Laureati, b. ‘1935 n.1–2’.
67. Letter of 19 November 1935 in Archivio del Movimento Laureati, b.
‘1935 n.1’. One can sense the growing sense of alienation of Righetti from
a letter he wrote to the president of the FUCI, Giovanni Ambrosetti when
the latter invited him to speak at the national congress of 1936, the year
that celebrated the 40th birthday of the federation. Righetti wrote: ‘the
40th birthday of the FUCI … should be engaged in making a solemn and
authoritative apology for what the FUCI has done, produced and defended.
Now, the present signatory is, if ever, the less indicated for the role, because
he in the first place with Montini has been questioned during the last
period’. Letter of 16 July 1936 in Archivio del Movimento Laureati, b.
‘1936 n.1–2’.
68. For the complex relationship of Catholics to the imperial idea, see R. Moro,
‘Il mito dell’impero in Italia fra universalismo cristiano e totalitarismo’ in
D. Menozzi and R. Moro (eds.), Cattolicesimo e totalitarismo. Chiese e
culture religiose tra le due guerre mondiali (Italia, Spagna, Francia)
(Brescia, 2004), 311–71.
69. (a.), ‘Fede e Patria’, Azione fucina, 8 March 1936.
70. R. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist modernities, 126.
86 J. DAGNINO
which enjoyed very close ties with the FUCI.5 For Daniel-Rops, since the
Renaissance there had been a gigantic struggle between a Christian and
an anti-Christian conception of man, which had culminated, in his eyes,
in the modern idolatry of individualism by making man the centre of the
universe:
Our civilisation has been struggling for the last two centuries to make man
alone the foundation of everything. Transferring the concept of absolute
from God to man … it leaves him with a liberty that is synonymous with
uncertainty. We will see that this fundamental uncertainty … confirms and
explains our contemporary decay.6
The ideas held by Daniel-Rops that most appealed to the fucini were his
condemnation of a mechanistic conception of life and a dry rationalism
that fragmented man in his integrity and authenticity, as well as the cult
of experimentalism that had ‘subordinated reason to the senses and God
to reason; in sum, God to the senses and thus, our God has become what
is susceptible of experience by the individual, but, naturally, the abstract
individual, not this or that man in his concrete humanity; a universal
abstraction that has been subdivided in innumerable particular abstrac-
tions: the economic man, the man of culture, the political man, etc.’.7
Furthermore, according to Giuseppe de Luca, Western civilisation was
undergoing a process of inversion of healthy values, in which ‘there is a
new return to instinct against reason, of sense against conscience, of sex
against the will’.8 Above all, for the fucini Western culture had lost its
unity of culture and life, leaving it devoid of a transcendental and coher-
ent Weltanschauung. For the fucini, a true and vigorous culture meant a
solid and conscious orientation of life in a determined age. As the crisis
was perceived as total, it inevitably affected every aspect of human exis-
tence. The university students firmly condemned the current trends of
thought, whether it be the enveloping irrationalism to be found in much
of European popular culture, or positivism and neo-idealism, the former
for having ‘searched the truth in the mere external reality’ and the lat-
ter for having ‘sought refuge and isolation in the sole internal thought’.9
The ecclesiastical assistant Adriano Bernareggi also rejected what he saw
as a pervasive moral crisis, the origins of which had to be located in the
diverse attempts to construct an autonomous and purely human morality,
which had proven unable to ‘put a break on the dissolution of morals’.10
In the same article, and strongly influenced by the consequences of the
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 89
were all part of the common usage in ecclesiastical language by the turn
of the century.24 It was in the interwar period—and especially the 1930s—
that there emerged a growing awareness of the presence of new alterna-
tive sacral frameworks and not just the return to immemorial times of
pagan worship, but also the consciousness of the novelty represented by
the totalitarian experiments and their potential threats to Christianity and
humankind in general. By 1935, the former ecclesiastical assistant of the
FUCI, Giovanni Battista Montini, was concerned about present culture,
which he perceived as predominantly ‘pagan and … tends to submerge
us’.25 Along similar lines, the anti-Fascist Catholic, Alcide de Gasperi, was
forced to admit in 1936 that ‘myth … is a necessity of our times, an epoch
more inclined to accept simple formulae, sentimental and at times irratio-
nal. Without a “mystique”… one does not win over the masses … fascism,
socialism and Nazism, all of them have their own mystique.’26
The anti-Fascist Catholic and frequent contributor to Azione fucina
and Studium, Igino Giordani, clearly diagnosed the emergence of dif-
ferent and new religiosities, outside the institutional frameworks of the
traditional ones. Furthermore, he viewed them as a product of moder-
nity and secularisation, and their frequent existence in a syncretic fash-
ion. He described these emerging spiritualities as ‘a sort of big American
warehouse, where anyone can find anything: false churches, elastic credos,
diverse philosophical combinations and spiritual solutions for every diges-
tion’, with surrogates for every genuine religious value: ‘theism for spirit,
idealism for ideal, modernism for modernity, religiosity for religion’.27
Similarly, Giulio Bevilacqua warned of the danger of these new movements
that searched for redemption through the power of the sole faculties of
man and the quest for an intramundane transcendence, writing against all
those who preached ‘a secular Gospel for man’, as well as the proliferating
‘social messianisms’. Interestingly, in the same article, Bevilacqua explic-
itly used the expression ‘political religions’ to characterise the different
forces that in a Promethean and Nietzschean fashion proclaimed heaven
on earth and the advent of a new superman devoted heart and soul to a
new-found sense of earthly collectivity.28 Furthermore, he explained the
surge of the phenomenon of the sacralisation of politics as a direct con-
sequence of the interwar spiritual crisis, which had left man fragmented
and divided and looking for a new sense of unity, belonging, and destiny.
In this way, Europe was experiencing the deconsecration and devastation
of the temples of the Catholic faith and the ‘surfacing of new temples and
multiplication of new altars devoted to the human demiurge’.29 Adriano
92 J. DAGNINO
Bolshevism
At the beginning of the 1930s onwards, some writers of both Azione
fucina and Studium started to probe—following in many cases the exam-
ple of Nikolai Berdiaev, who saw in communism the manifestation of a
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 93
‘unleash upon the nations the bloodiest wars and the most savage revolu-
tions, accompanied by massacres of human life’.44 In his mind, Rosa had
no doubts: communism was the ‘most terrible and ferocious enemy of
religion and civilisation’.45
Whereas Rosa’s analysis of Bolshevism was charged with strong mor-
alistic undertones and a Manichean vision that rendered his perspective
somewhat ahistorical and unable to grasp the novelty represented by
Bolshevik totalitarianism and its ensuing sacralisation of politics, others in
the federation proved more able and perceptive to capturing the unique-
ness of Soviet communism in this realm. What was most salient to these
fucini was the strong charge of utopian vision, the presence of millennial
expectations in Russian Bolshevism, its sense of radically altering the old
order and starting everything anew, as well as the fervent drive to trans-
form human nature itself.46 For Igino Giordani communism was ‘essen-
tially religious’, despite its avowed atheism and its enormous power of
attraction lay precisely in its presenting itself ‘as a religion … that aspires
to realise an atheist Kingdom of God’ and to ‘organise the state as a satanic
Church’.47 So too was denounced the Soviets’ anthropological revolution,
the radical transformation of human nature that purportedly would give
rise to the New Soviet Man.48
Precisely because Soviet communism was not merely an economic or
social order but an alternative religion, some in the federation could com-
prehend ‘the sacrifice of its members and the intransigent exclusivism of its
doctrine’ due to Bolshevism being ‘the new religion of the proletariat that
must enlighten the whole world’.49 According to Giulio Bevilacqua, what
was additionally disconcerting was that this new religion of the ‘terrestrial
paradise’ had extended and ‘rooted itself in the soul of the masses through
a tenacity that is both new and desperate’. In the view of Montini’s friend,
the struggle between two different and opposing faiths was titanic: ‘one
cannot overcome completely a faith if not with another faith’.50
Further momentum in the analysis of Soviet communism as a political
religion was certainly provided by the promulgation of Pius XI’s encycli-
cal Divini Redemptoris, on 19 March 1937.51 Though this document is
mostly noted for its definition of communism as ‘intrinsically perverse’,52
it has some elements that are interesting for the analysis of Bolshevism as a
political religion. Pius XI denounced in communism what he saw as a ‘false
redemption’ and a ‘false mysticism’ and its dynamics as a twisted ‘crusade
for the progress of humanity’.53 He went on to condemn communism’s
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 95
‘presumed new Gospel’ and its alleged ‘message of health and redemption’
as well as the ‘soviet paradise that is earthly’.54
The encyclical served to further the debate among the university stu-
dents. By the late 1930s many of them perceived the presence in Russia of
a new and antagonistic religious order, which had assumed the ‘redemp-
tive mission for humanity’ and, like all religions, ‘needed its own martyrs
and sacrifices’.55 Nevertheless, it was probably G. B. Tragella who most
cogently perceived the phenomenon of a new inner-worldly sacral narra-
tive and universe in Soviet Russia. His contribution is particularly interest-
ing since he linked the triad of political religion–totalitarianism–modernity
and introduced the novel concept of ‘totalitarian religion’.56 As a totalitar-
ian phenomenon, Bolshevism ‘reclaimed the whole man and the entirety
of humanity’ and in this fashion, ‘communism becomes a religion … with
its own Index for heterodox doctrines’, where the general secretary of
the Communist Party was ‘the great priest of this new religion’.57 For
Tragella, communism was a fully-fledged religion, with its dogmas, mar-
tyrs, rites, and celebrations:
This new religion has its own dogma: the proletariat; its prophet and mes-
siah: Lenin, whose bodily remains already are the object of a cult; its sacred
texts: the works of Marx, Engels, Lenin … its own morality: the interest of
the people.58
National Socialism
Unlike Bolshevism, where there were few hesitations or doubts about the
totalitarian and religious nature of the Russian experiment, in the case
of National Socialism the writers of the federations exhibited a certain
degree of ambiguity and ambivalence, at least during the first half of the
1930s. Some fucini even demonstrated a high degree of admiration for
the German nation. An anonymous university student writing to Emilio
Guano from Munich at the end of 1936 could not repress his high regard
for ‘this German people, who have the sense of organisation in their blood,
the sense of unity and thus of force, of cordiality, tradition and power’.59
Nevertheless, as with Bolshevism, what was most upsetting in Nazism
for many European Catholics was not so much its strong anti-Christian
campaigns and persecutions against the Catholic faithful. In the words of
Christopher Dawson, what was most terrifying about National Socialism
was not ‘that the Nazi movement is anti-religious. The danger is rather
that it has a religion of its own which is not that of Christian orthodoxy.’60
96 J. DAGNINO
Part of the federation’s ambiguity was due to the signing of the con-
cordat between Hitler’s government and the Holy See in July 1933—
an arrangement in which, to the surprise of the Vatican authorities, the
German state conceded practically all of the papal negotiator’s demands.61
Nevertheless, persecution and harassment of the Catholic faithful was
soon to follow. Indeed, attacks on Catholic associations, clergy, and faith-
ful, though they occurred before the concordat, increased after its signa-
ture, especially with regard to Catholic youth organisations. Baldur von
Schirach, the Reich Youth leader, on 17 June 1933 prohibited dual mem-
bership in Catholic youth associations and the Hitler Youth,62 though it
was not until 1939 that the Catholic Young Men’s Association (JMV) was
eventually disbanded by the Gestapo, making membership of the Hitler
Youth obligatory. A far more sinister turn of events occurred during the
Night of the Long Knives in 1934, when Erich Klausener, general sec-
retary of Catholic Action, and Adalbert Probst, national director of the
Catholic Youth Sports Association, were assassinated.63 This was followed
in 1935 by a major defamation campaign directed against the Catholic
clergy.64
Naturally, these and other similar events did not go unnoticed in the
FUCI and the Movimento Laureati branches. The Night of the Long
Knives, for example, was quickly rebuked as a sign that Germany was
undergoing ‘an era of renewed pagan barbarism … even worse than the
one of Ancient times’.65 So too was adamantly condemned the intermit-
tent persecutions suffered by the Catholic Church in Germany, as well as
the Nazi project for the education of the young who, according to Enrico
Rosa, were suffering and being absorbed ‘by the passions and struggles of
the new pagans’.66
Nazi Germany was also increasingly perceived as representing a bur-
geoning danger and threat in the ambit of international relations and
diplomacy. The fucini viewed with growing concern Hitler’s interna-
tional programmes and struggles. The plebiscite to be held in the Saarland
region in January 1935 was one of such events, especially for the Catholics
living in that area.67 So was the case of Germany’s armaments programmes
and increasingly militaristic foreign policy, as was evidenced by the military
occupation of the right bank of the Rhine, an act that profoundly ‘upsets
… the entire international life and becomes a serious threat to peace’.68
This preoccupation reached its climax with the Austrian Anschluss in 1938
and the worries that Catholic Austria would be completely overrun by the
anti-Christian German government.69
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 97
Particular shock in the FUCI branches was caused by the passing of the
Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Children of 14 July 1933,
which allowed the compulsory sterilisation of persons suffering from such
diverse and alleged hereditary diseases as chronic alcoholism, schizophre-
nia, manic depression, and people catalogued as ‘asocial’ or ‘community
aliens’.70 Also worrying for many in the associations was the perceived
danger represented by Germanism, understood as a ‘prideful will to power
… and a robust anti-Roman hatred’.71
All these elements, plus the frequent violations of the concordat,
led many in the federation to start, for the first time, to view National
Socialism as an expression of an alternative and secular religiosity that
had as its final aim the replacement of the Christian religion. Nazism was
a ‘kind of religion or secular and nationalistic and “racist” faith, with a
whole series of conceptions and ideas, or as the Germans prefer to call it,
a “vision of the world”’. It was a faith that aimed to animate and trans-
form the entire life of the German people, both in the public and private
spheres, and to infuse in the consciousness of all Germanic people the
notion of a ‘divine mission’. Additionally, this new religiosity attributed to
Adolf Hitler ‘an extraordinary mandate from God to realise the absolute
unity of the German people’.72 Furthermore, in this new secular faith,
the Christian concept of the immortality of the soul was profoundly sub-
verted and replaced with an intramundane conception of immortality or
the ‘survival of the spirit of the nation and of the race’. It was, in sum, the
new ‘religion of the heroes of the Aryan race’.73 Striking a similar chord,
Guido Gonella denounced Nazism’s pretence of wanting to ‘aryanise the
heavens, proclaiming the apostles of neo-paganism’.74 Nevertheless, some
degree of ambiguity remained, especially the distinction made by some
in this realm between the government and ‘a minority of influential and
fanatical elements’ who nurtured the project of establishing a ‘Germanic
religion’.75 As time passed, more and more Italian Catholics recognised
in Nazism an existential core of religious character, which, according to
Klaus Vondung, meant that at its root lay religious experiences that led to
the manifestations of a new faith, an inner-worldly religion that aimed at
the deification of the national community as a unit of common blood.76
An increasing number of fucini started to denounce the ‘mystique of
blood as the basis of a religious evaluation of the race’.77 Of particular rel-
evance in this context was the publication in Studium in 1935 of an article
by Dietrich von Hildebrand, the German philosopher and theologian who
had escaped Nazi Germany in 1933 and settled in Vienna.78 According to
98 J. DAGNINO
von Hildebrand, Nazi ideology and theology were centred in four cardinal
points: anti-personalism, materialism of the blood, anti-rational relativism,
and a profound anti-Christian ethics.79 Nazi theology presented a true and
proper ‘anti-spiritual cult’, where Christian cardinal virtues of justice and
charity were substituted by ‘the virtue of combat’. An ‘ethic of struggle’
was introduced in place of the virtue of humility and moderation, all with
the purpose of ‘glorifying a brutal idol of humanity’.80 In von Hildebrand’s
view, Nazism as a political religion represented a modern phenomenon
that responded to the collapse of German liberalism and the destruction of
old certainties produced by the Great War and the consequent yearning of
many Germans for a new sense of community where they could feel whole
again, in this case, in ‘the community of the blood’.81 Along similar lines,
Giulio Bevilacqua saw Nazi Germany as dominated by new idols such as
‘the idolatry of man, the race and the soil’.82
Also worthy of note are the insights of the member of the Movimento
Laureati Mario Bendiscioli during this period. Bendiscioli was one of
the most knowledgeable Italians of the time with regard to the religious
evolution of German society who published, during the interwar years,
two volumes that are particularly relevant for this topic.83 Bendiscioli was
convinced that ‘racist neo-paganism’ was increasing its influence greatly,
with a tendency to install itself as a ‘truth or universal myth, even beyond
Germany’.84 One of his favourite targets was Jakob Wilhelm Hauer,
founder of the German Faith Movement and an SS man, whose inter-
pretation of the Bhagavad Gita influenced Himmler and the SS.85 Hauer
founded his movement glorifying his society’s great romantic and ide-
alistic literary figures and philosophers, blended with a positive view of
Hinduism and Buddhism.86 Hauer was ‘one of the first to realise and
proclaim that the German faith should become the religious aspect of
the racist ideology of Nazism’.87 Bendiscioli firmly rejected Hauer’s hier-
archical use of the leader cult and his establishing of a series of rites and
symbols to mark the calendar year, such as ‘the feast of spring, the feast
of summer, the feast of the equinox, commemoration of the dead, con-
secration of life … all secular parodies of the Christian sacraments’.88 In
effect, the Nazis introduced a new calendar and festive year, as a symbol of
how they embodied the inauguration of a new era. The Nazi festive year
commenced on 30 January, the celebration of the ‘seizure’ of power. It
continued with Heroes’ Memorial Day on 16 March, an attempt by the
government to monopolise the memory of the Great War’s fallen. Then
came the celebration of Hitler’s birthday on 20 April, an important event
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 99
in consolidating the leader cult and myth. Other important dates were 21
June, the celebration of the summer solstice, and the festivities held dur-
ing September of every year at Nuremberg to celebrate the party.89 All of
these new festivities pointed to the creation of a new sacred history that
together formed a ‘history of salvation’.90
Though Bendiscioli traced the roots of the Nazi political religion back
to the pan-Germanic movement of the nineteenth century, he was at pains
to establish the modern and novel nature of the experiment. In this sense,
he saw in the Great War the true catalyst for the establishment of this new
religion. It was a new phenomenon of the interwar years that matched the
needs of an emerging mass society. He also perceived it as an all-embracing
and totalitarian experiment that left no single aspect of human existence
untouched: ‘The religion of the race appears as a new experience, attuned
to the times, apt to perform a radical renovation of society, beyond all past
ideological schemes.’91
Another favourite target in Bendiscioli’s analysis was the work and fig-
ure of Alfred Rosenberg, author of The Myth of the Twentieth Century—a
work that, despite Hitler’s rejection of it constituting an official party
statement, nevertheless sold more than a million copies.92 For the Italian
author, Rosenberg’s book constituted the ‘sacred book of militant rac-
ism’,93 seeing his racist religion as a fruit of his exasperated nationalism,
from where derived the need of ‘a German religion and a German Church
that would become the theological-ecclesiastical substratum of the unity
of the race and the Reich’.94
Bendiscioli also extended his analysis of the sacralisation of politics in
Nazi Germany to figures like Walther Darré, whose ideology of ‘blood
and soil’ made such an influential impression on leaders like Himmler.
According to the Italian historian, the movement of ‘blood and soil’
‘made of the life outdoors a religion with its own rites: the salute at dawn,
cremations … the German marriage, the cult of the sun and the flame’.95
Bendiscioli went beyond figures like Hauer or Rosenberg. In his per-
spective it was the entire regime that was involved in the building of a
political religion, particularly through the Hitler Youth, the SS, and SA. In
Hitler Youth, for example, the Italian author saw the intent of creating ‘a
spirit of unity and nationally totalitarian’ with the preaching of new values
and a new morality that exalted novel virtues such as honour and courage,
to the detriment of the Christian virtues of charity and humility.96
What made Bendiscioli’s writings most remarkable was his uniting
in a cluster of concepts the terms totalitarianism, political religion, and
100 J. DAGNINO
Italian Fascism
Already in 1931, Pius XI had condemned, in the Italian-language encyc-
lical, Non Abbiamo Bisogno, some aspects of what he perceived as false
religious elements in Fascist ideology. Written during the heat of the crisis
of 1931 over the youth groups of Catholic Action,105 it firmly denounced
the regime’s intention of monopolising the education of the young, an
effort that the pope qualified as a clear example of ‘pagan statolatry’ and
of a ‘new religiosity … that becomes persecution’.106 However, much of
the polemical vein contained in the encyclical was tempered and watered
down when at the end of the document the pontiff explicitly affirmed that
with the encyclical he did not pretend to ‘condemn the party as such’, but
only the practices that went against Catholic teaching.107 Indeed, ambigu-
ity and ambivalence characterised the relationship between the Catholic
Church and the Fascist totalitarian trajectory.108 Many of these hesitations
were certainly due to the sharing of some common doctrinal elements,
such as the cult of authority and hierarchy, organicism, and the antidemo-
cratic tendencies exhibited by both institutions during the interwar years.
Moreover, as we have seen, the church had applauded and supported sev-
eral of the regime’s efforts, from the demographic battle, the fight against
indecency and pornography, to the invasion of Ethiopia.109 Furthermore,
as has been seen in the previous chapter, the signing of the Lateran Pacts
in 1929—and especially the concordat, with its very generous provisions
for the church—had heightened this ambiguity, leading many Catholics to
believe that the Fascist government was a possible and unexpected ally for
the Christian restoration of Italian society.110
In this respect, the FUCI and the Movimento Laureati constituted no
exception. Indeed, fuelled by Fascist visions of modernity, the intellectual
groups of Catholic Action elaborated their own project of an alternative
modernity during these years, endorsing almost all the policies enacted by
the regime. Furthermore, this consensus in support for the Fascist gov-
ernment lasted well into the war years. Part of this ambiguity revolved
around the very nature of the Fascist regime as a totalitarian experiment.
While there were concerns and occasional fears about the all-embracing
and apparently endless demands for power by the state, there were some
who regarded positively the totalitarian dynamic present in Fascist Italy,
especially when compared to Bolshevik Russia or Nazi Germany. The
ecclesiastical assistant, Adriano Bernareggi, deploring the fragmentations
and divisions produced both by socialism and liberalism, spoke of the
102 J. DAGNINO
need for a unifying and coherent world view capable of offering certainty
and refuge in the uncertain times of the post-war crisis. In the religious
realm, this ‘totalitarian’ idea was provided by Catholicism. In the political-
social ambit he also asserted the need for ‘a central idea, a conception that
dominates everything, embraces and coordinates, a totalitarian idea and
conception. Among us, it is Fascism that embodies this notion from a
social and political perspective.’111 Striking a similar chord, others viewed
as integral elements of the Fascist totalitarian experiment the just balance
between discipline and liberty and the supposed space it gave to true per-
sonality. In this sense, Fascism represented a superior and organic synthe-
sis, fuelled by its spirit of Romanness that was at the heart of its totalitarian
nature, representing ‘discipline, hierarchy and law’.112
Nonetheless, both in the FUCI associations and other organisations
of the Italian Catholic world, there were some voices that expressed their
concern with regard to the Fascist sacralisation of politics. More often
than not, one has to read between the lines of these criticisms since they
were usually expressed in guarded terms, not only due to fear of Fascist
censorship but also because they could irritate the overwhelming majority
of fucini who were favourably disposed towards the regime.
From its very beginnings, Fascism had tried to affirm itself as a politi-
cal religion. Already in 1923, speaking of the nascent Fascist experiment,
the Fascist Piero Zama had declared that ‘Religion is the sense of mystery
manifested in diverse forms. Religion is the human endeavour directed by
a moral conception … A people, or better, a militia that faces death for a
commandment, that accepts life in its purest conception as a mission and
offers it in sacrifice, truly has that sense of mystery that is the fundamental
motive of religion’, adding that the Fascist ‘rites of religion, the moving
silences of the “black shirts” in the face of brothers who have abandoned
the terrestrial combat’ were all aspects of the new religiosity offered by
Fascism.113 For Giuseppe Bottai, Fascism represented much more than
another political regime. For the Fascist hierarch, it ‘was something more
than a doctrine. It is a political and civil religion … it is the religion of
Italy.’114 In 1932, Mussolini himself solemnly affirmed that ‘Fascism was
a religious conception’, in which man was viewed in an immanent rela-
tionship with a superior law that elevated and made him a member of a
spiritual society.115
Some in the FUCI associations viewed with growing concern the dei-
fication of the state under Fascism, the ‘myth of the new state’116—a state
that was not merely a guardian of society but that understood itself as
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 103
liberty and natural right’.124 It was precisely the Christian notion of per-
sonhood—that is, of man being created by a transcendental God and with
ultra-terrestrial ends—that made some in the association fearful of the
Fascist sacralisation of the state. In a similar vein, Gino Ferroni observed
the novelty of the Fascist state-building enterprise with regard to the old
liberal conception. In the scale of absolute values, the individual had been
replaced by a deified state:
The state, that before was just the simple guardian of the legal order and of
public security, now extends its sphere of action, it becomes the protagonist
of the ethical idea, it propounds its own conception of life, in which it is the
state itself that is the main reason of life.125
Fascism’s New Man, perhaps more than any other of its myths, rep-
resented its religious impulse to begin time anew, also incorporating, in
a syncretic fashion, some Christian elements. For Fausto Montanari, the
Fascist anthropological revolution represented yet another attempt by
man to reach beyond the limits of humanity and the natural laws set by
God, in which ‘man to become more than man tries to become absorbed
in the great all’.133 According to Montanari, the New Man was modelled
on the figure of Cain. It was a ‘mastodon superman’ who in his path
destroyed everything worthy of civilisation—laws, truth, and morality.134
It was a myth that revolved around a complete arbitrariness of thought
and action, all for ‘the illusion of reaching the divine infinite’.135 He firmly
denounced the ‘void of futurism’, the ‘inhumanity of collectivism’ as driv-
ing forces behind the myth of the new man, a destructive myth, that in its
quest to establish an alternative religiosity endangered the true values of
Catholicism.136
But it was perhaps Father Giulio Bevilacqua who most cogently under-
stood the new religiosity involved in Fascism’s New Man. Contrasting
this myth with the Christian concept of heroism, he denounced what he
perceived as the ‘heroic conception of life that exalts our era’, a notion
charged with bellicosity that responded to youth’s need for greatness,
glory, and supreme liberty, and a new nomos capable of offering a total
conception of life. It was such a powerful myth that the ‘modern soul is
disposed to every desperate gesture of annulment in order to achieve it.’137
It was a myth that ‘induced life to immolate itself to the idol, to instinct’
where there were no true heroes but just the ‘deluded, the juggler, the
mad, the delinquent’.138 He went on to denounce the ‘tendency of too
many contemporary heroes to identify their own self with the cause, with
the ideal’ whether it be the nation, justice, or God himself.139
Some university students also expressed a concern and criticised
the cult of the leader, the cult of il Duce and his charismatic figure in
Fascist Italy, another central myth, and probably the most popular one
in Fascism’s political religion.140 Fundamental in the construction of this
myth was Mussolini’s co-opting of the ideals, power, and imagery of the
ancient Roman Empire of Augustus and his successors. During the Fascist
period, Mussolini’s government restored Augustan monuments in the
northern Campus Martius and introduced obelisks into the urban space,
as had Augustus. Indeed, the figure of the emperor became the object of
Mussolini’s emulation, particularly after the establishment of the empire
in 1936. He perceived himself as Augustus’ continuator, both politically
106 J. DAGNINO
and militarily. A high point in this process was the celebration in 1937 of
the bimillenium of Augustus’ birth by means of the grandiose exhibition
Mostra Augustea della Romanità. Augustus was the central figure in this
exhibition that recorded the entire scope of ancient Roman history, an
exhibition that aimed to demonstrate the continuity between the Rome of
Augustus and that of Mussolini.141 In this regard, of particular interest is an
article published by Fausto Montanari in the early months of 1938, in which
he indirectly condemned the burgeoning tendency to worship Mussolini’s
figure. In sharp and veiled contrast with Fascism’s appropriation of ancient
Roman imagery, Montanari rescued the figure of Augustus as the emperor
who had opened the path for the distinction between a political and a reli-
gious sphere.142 Furthermore, whereas according to Montanari Augustus
had kept the cult of the emperor solely at a symbolic level, after his death
it tended ‘to become increasingly personal and effective’ and had become
such a burden that it ‘broke the minds of many emperors’ through all the
megalomania and paraphernalia that it involved, and the grandiose demon-
strations, rites, and rituals used to perpetuate it.143
In a similar vein, the central ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI, Guido
Anichini, in an article written to commemorate the sixteenth centenary
of Saint Ambrose, rescued his healthy sense of Romanness, a concep-
tion that had nothing to do with ‘the pagan concept of the state and the
Emperor’.144 The article had further meaning if we remember that Pius
XI, before assuming the papal throne, had also been cardinal archbishop
of Milan, just like Saint Ambrose. Anichini reminded his readers how Saint
Ambrose had fulfilled in a perfect balance both civil and religious func-
tions, always aware of the separateness and distinction of the religious
and political realm. When he was called to assume political leadership, he
always acted in the interest of the common Christian good, even if this
meant challenging ‘the usurpers Caesars’ that had attempted to establish a
religion of their own becoming the first priests and sacred figures.145
Conclusion
It is clear from the preceding pages that the emerging political religions
were viewed not just as a simple historical regression to barbaric times but
as a by-product of modernity itself. Indeed, in the most interesting cases,
some Catholic intellectuals united—in a cluster of concepts—the notions
of totalitarianism, political religions, and modernity. This was especially
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 107
The apostle of the modern world must become aware of a tragic and humili-
ating reality: the century of scientific analysis, the century of precise obser-
vations, of concrete realisations … is an idolatrous century. New cults, new
liturgies, new acts of faith, new symbols, new priesthoods, new inquisitions …
new wars of religion.149
Notes
1. To name only a few of the myriad of books that were published during
these years by European Catholics dealing with this topic: H. Daniel-
Rops, Il mondo senz’anima (Brescia, 1933); A. Gemelli, Idee e battaglie
per la coltura cattolica (Milan, 1931); H. Belloc, The Crisis of Civilization
108 J. DAGNINO
(New York, 1937); C. Dawson, Religion and the Modern State (London,
1935) and J. Maritain, Le Crepuscule de la Civilisation (Montreal, 1941).
2. For the FUCI, see R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica,
1929–1937 (Bologna, 1979), 419–36.
3. C. Salotti, Le Crisi della Società Contemporanea (Pisani, 1931).
4. In this sense, many of these points were shared by the Gruppi Universitari
Fascisti (GUF). For the GUF’s vision on the crisis of civilisation see L. La
Rovere, Storia dei GUF. Organizzazione, politica e miti della gioventù
universitaria fascista 1919–1943 (Turin, 2003), 228–36.
5. The book is the already mentioned Il mondo senz’anima. On Daniel-
Rops see J.-L Loubet del Bayle, Les non-conformistes des années 30. Une
tentative de renouvellement de la pensée politique française (Paris, 1969),
81–91, 102–8, 167–75, 193–205, 215–35, 250–66, 276–86, 330–50
and 420–33.
6. H. Daniel-Rops, Il mondo senz’anima, 75.
7. M. F, ‘Il mondo senz’anima’, Azione fucina, 12 March 1933. Among
other articles praising Daniel-Rops see, for example, F. M., ‘Recensioni’,
Studium, 2 (1935), in which the author proclaims that Daniel-Rops’ final
goal was to ‘comprehend our time so we can love it, and love it to under-
stand it and guide it back to God’; Igino Giordani, ‘Alla ricerca di un
ordine nuovo’, Azione fucina, 27 May 1934. Azione fucina also pub-
lished an article by Daniel-Rops entitled ‘Aspirazioni di giovani’ in its
issue of 26 February 1933, in which the French intellectual proclaimed
that the most pressing yearn of European youth was a ‘return to the
spirit’ and that the greatest disgrace of modern civilisation was to ‘have
abandoned faith in a metaphysical truth’. Other foreign authors who
were influential in the FUCI’s treatment of the crisis of civilisation were,
among others, Christopher Dawson and Hilaire Belloc. On Dawson see,
for example, Lector, ‘Tra la vita e il libro. L’unità europea’, Studium, 5
(1933), in which the author praises Dawson’s book The Making of Europe
(London, 1932) and Lector, ‘Tra la vita e il libro. Religione ed equilibrio
spirituale europeo’, Studium, 10–11 (1933), in which the author very
enthusiastically reviews Dawson’s book Enquiries into religion and cul-
ture (London, 1933). With regard to Belloc, in 1927 Mario Bendiscioli
translated for the Morcelliana the English author’s work Europe and the
Faith (London, 1920) under the title L’anima cattolica dell’Europa
(Brescia, 1927). For the university students, what was most engaging
about these British writers was their identification of Europe with
Christianity and the latter as the driving soul of the continent.
8. 283 Giuseppe de Luca, ‘Sopra due libri di morale’, Studium, 9 (1933).
On this very influential figure of Italian Catholicism during the twentieth
century see, for example, R. Guarnieri, Una singolare amicizia. Ricordando
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 109
115. B. Mussolini, La Dottrina del Fascismo, in idem, Scritti e Discorsi. Dal
1932 al 1933, VIII (Milan, 1934), 69–70.
116. E. Gentile, Il mito dello Stato nuovo, dall’antigiolittismo al fascismo
(Rome and Bari, 2002).
117. E. Gentile, La Grande Italia. Il mito della nazione nel XX secolo (Rome
and Bari, 2006), 173–84; idem, Il culto del littorio, 99–104; idem, La via
italiana al totalitarismo. Il partito e lo Stato nel regime fascista (Rome,
2002), 203–23; and P. G. Zunino, L’ideologia del fascismo. Miti, credenze
e valori nella stabilizzazione del regime (Bologna, 1995), 187.
118. E. Gentile, La via italiana al totalitarismo, 137–38. Also see
P. Buchignani, La rivoluzione in camicia nera. Dalle origini al 25 luglio
1943 (Milan, 2006), 304–54.
119. Darius, ‘Ecce nova facio omnia’, Studium, 8–9 (1938).
120. Fausto Montanari, ‘Gesù Cristo e il Novecento’, Studium, 5 (1938).
121. Ibid.
122. Ibid.
123. Ibid.
124. Stefano Riccio, ‘La dottrina etica dello Stato’, Azione fucina, 25 August
1935.
125. Gino Ferroni, ‘Valore dell’ordine corporativo’, Azione fucina, 16 August
1936.
126. ‘La personalità nella storia’, Azione fucina, 18 April 1937.
127. For Fascism’s anthropological revolution see N. Zapponi, ‘Lo stile del
fascismo: un’estetica della sopravvivenza’, Mondo contemporaneo, 1/3
(2005), 5–50; M.-A. Matard Bonucci and P. Milza (eds.), L’Homme nou-
veau dans l’Europe fasciste (1922–1945). Entre dictature et totalitarisme
(Paris, 2004); E. Gentile, Fascismo. Storia e interpretazione (Rome and
Bari, 2002), 235–64; and G. L. Mosse, The Image of Man. The Creation
of Modern Masculinity (New York, 1998), 155–80.
128. M. Carli, Codice della vita fascista (Rome, 1928), 6.
129. Ibid., 10.
130. Partito Nazionale Fascista, Il cittadino soldato (Rome, 1936), 11–2.
131. E. Gentile, Il culto del littorio, 162–65.
132. Partito Nazionale Fascista, La dottrina del fascismo, (Rome, 1936), 26.
133. Fausto Montanari, ‘Il superuomo’, Azione fucina, 9 June 1935.
134. Ibid.
135. Ibid.
136. Ibid.
137. Miles, ‘Eroismo’, Studium, 7–8 (1936).
138. Ibid.
139. Ibid.
THE CRISIS OF CIVILISATION AND THE SACRALISATION OF POLITICS IN 1930S... 117
140. S. Gundle, C. Duggan and G. Pieri (eds.), The Cult of the Duce. Mussolini
and the Italians (Manchester, 2013); E. Gentile, Il culto del littorio,
235–65; S. Falasca-Zamponi, Fascist Spectacle. The Aesthetics of Power in
Mussolini’s Italy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 2000), 42–88;
L. Passerini, Mussolini immaginario (Rome and Bari, 1991); and
P. Melograni, ‘The Cult of the Duce in Mussolini’s Italy’, Journal of
Contemporary History, 11/4 (1976), 221–37.
141. E. Gentile, Fascismo di Pietra (Rome and Bari, 2008); A. Thomas
Wilkins, ‘Augustus, Mussolini, and the Parallel Imagery of Empire’, in
C. Lazzaro and R.J. Crum (eds.), Donatello among the Blackshirts. History
and Modernity in the Visual Culture of Fascist Italy (Ithaca and London,
2005), 53–65; and F. Scriba, Augustus in Schwarzhemd? Die Mostra
Augustea della Romanità in Rom, 1937/38 (Frankfurt am Main, 1995).
142. Fausto Montanari, ‘Augusto nella crisi culturale dell’impero’, Studium, 4
(1938).
143. Ibid.
144. Guido Anichini, ‘Da Prefetto a Vescovo’, Azione fucina, 11 December
1938.
145. Ibid.
146. Report from Brescia, 6 April 1934 in Archivio Centrale dello Stato,
Ministero dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza,
Divisione Affari Generali e Riservati, G1, b.19.
147. Reports from Vatican City, 13 May 1932 and from Padua, 4 October
1931, both in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno,
Polizia Politica, b.130.
148. Giulio Bevilacqua, ‘Sgombrare l’idolo’, Studium, 1 (1940).
149. Ibid.
CHAPTER 7
Faced with the novel challenge of the so-called ‘political religions’, the
university students of the 1930s were well aware that a new type of reli-
giosity, firmly anchored in the Catholic tradition, had to be offered to
the new generations. Above all, what was perceived to be of paramount
importance was the elevation and dignity of the lay faithful and the build-
ing of the individual personality, with the cultivation of the values of
interiority, intimacy, and development of the self. The main goal was to
become ‘master of myself and of my personality’.1 Additionally, since the
political religions represented themselves as total solutions for the men
and women of interwar Europe, a new, total Catholicism was deemed
necessary to offer to the young as the only means of preventing them from
succumbing to the attractions of the sacralisation of politics. Moreover,
the fucini carried out an ecclesiastical modernisation that, at least in part,
involved religious secularisation, with the adoption of a language, forms
of action, and new models of sainthood that partly reflected what Renato
Moro has called the politicisation of the sacred.2 Along similar lines, Fulvio
de Giorgi has traced the pervasiveness of the military metaphor in the
religious discourses of the times, with an emphasis on concepts such as
‘war’, ‘soldier’, ‘battle’, ‘militia’, ‘heroism’, and ‘conquest’ in what he has
no hesitation in calling an ‘ecclesiastical totalitarianism’ that took place in
Europe between the wars.3
Above all, in the eyes of the intellectuals of Catholic Action, what was
needed to put an end to the perceived burgeoning crisis of Western civili-
sation was a Catholicism capable of penetrating every aspect of private
and public life, whether it be the political, social, economic, or cultural
realms. It was a religiosity that had to be in line with the needs of an
emerging mass society, as was the case of Italy in the 1920s and 1930s.
Christianity was presented as a palingenetic force, as an ‘integral revolu-
tion’4 capable of mobilising the masses in an effort to sacralise them in an
age of mass politics and secularisation. Against the fragmentation of mod-
ern man, who was depicted as split at his most intimate core, Catholicism
offered a unifying and organic vision capable of transcending the deleteri-
ous effects of the liberal version of modernity that so badly needed to be
countered. The duty of every Christian was to give a religious sense to
every aspect of life, and, Catholicism being ‘totalitarian, it was self-evident
that the Catholic must feel everything in a unitary sense, that is that he
must bring to every act his animus catholicus’.5 The ecclesiastical assistant,
Adriano Bernareggi, 6 deplored the fragmentation generated by liberal
modernity between ‘physical man, ethical man, religious man, the thinker,
the professional, the artist, the citizen’, calling for a central idea, capable
of coordinating every aspect of life and giving it a spiritual dimension.
That idea was, naturally, Catholicism, with its ‘totalitarian conception,
through which religion appears inseparable from life’. Indeed, in times of
a perceived epochal crisis, Bernareggi was optimistic and confident of the
palingenetic role to be played by Christianity, as he envisaged a ‘society
in which the Christian spirit regains its primordial role’.7 This new-found
sense of optimism revealed a kind of ‘faith in the crisis’: the notion that,
as a consequence of European culture being swept away and corroded as a
product of its internal contradictions and flaws, the intellectual and spiri-
tual fields were vacant and could be filled with new ideas. Such ideas were
based on a deeply felt sense that an epochal opportunity was being pre-
sented to Christianity to become, once again, the driving force of Western
civilisation. It was a Catholicism that presented itself in the robes of a spirit
of conquest, dynamic, youthful, even aggressive at times, capable of filling
the void left by the crisis of civilisation. Catholicism, in these years, aimed
at offering a ‘clear vision of the major problems of life, resolved under
the light of a totalitarian Christianity’,8 as the sole unifying force capable
of overcoming the apparent contradictions and confusions between, for
example, reason and sentiment, science and life, liberty and authority, and
the natural and supernatural. Furthermore, this vision of Catholicism was
FUCI IDEAS IN THE 1930S: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SPIRITUAL ORDER 121
charity and friendship. Franco Costa went as far as affirming that ‘among
the dominant lines of the FUCI’s spirituality there is no doubt that charity
is the principal one’.15 The virtue of charity was presented as a vivifying
force that penetrated every aspect of the Catholic life, giving it an ulti-
mate meaning and preventing it from becoming excessively formalistic,
bureaucratic, and dry in its application. Additionally, charity was a means
of democratising religious life, uniting every member of the association,
whether priest or lay person, on a path of common perfection, as an act
of love towards God, oneself, and one’s fellow brothers. Costa had no
doubt: ‘charity is the soul of the FUCI, it is its sense of life, the secret of
its fecundity’.16 Charity implied a radical renovation and regeneration in
Christ, a completely new vision of life, an ‘overturning of values’,17 leaving
behind every instinct of selfishness and egotism to make way for a new life
of selflessness and Christian optimism, a burning desire to bring everyone
back to the path of the cross.18 Furthermore, charity enhanced a sense of
belonging to a spiritual community and a sharing of common goals and
goods. In addition to charity and closely linked to it was the attention that
the fucini paid during these years to the theme of Christian friendship as
another means of attaining a richer formation of the internal personal-
ity, a religious character, and the cultivation of the values of interiority
and intimacy. Through friendship, depicted as a total and complete dona-
tion of self, the students aimed at a ‘plenitude of spiritual understanding’
through which ‘we come to know the intimate life of the friend’ with ‘his
inevitable miseries, his struggles to overcome them, his discomforts, his
enthusiasms, his conquests’. In sum, friendship was an excellent pedagogi-
cal tool that taught how ‘the problems of our friend are our problems, his
sufferings our sufferings, his joys our joys’.19 Christian friendship further
involved a profound spirit of religious optimism and joy, a communion of
ideals and principles that stood at the basis of the FUCI’s way of under-
standing and acting in life. It was a path to ‘know each other always more
intimately … in a way to know each other constantly close’.20 Above all,
the constant attention given to the patient construction of the personality
and the spirit of friendship entailed a spirit of sensitivity to the concrete
problems faced during student life, a serious engagement in cultural for-
mation, and as a means of achieving ‘reciprocal understanding, patient and
joyous charity’.21
Besides this insistence on the values of charity and friendship, there
were other elements of equal importance in the religious developments
of the 1930s, principally the renovation of the religious sciences proposed
FUCI IDEAS IN THE 1930S: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SPIRITUAL ORDER 123
theological studies less provincial. In 1937, for example, the FUCI branch
of Bologna had invited Romano Guardini to lecture at their chapter, an
attempt that ultimately failed.27 The FUCI made available to the Italian
audience, sometimes for the first time, the latest foreign ideas in theology
and religious studies, especially the work being carried out in Germany
and France. The association subscribed to the most important foreign reli-
gious journals of the time28 and some of its leaders, such as Emilio Guano,
frequently travelled abroad to stay in touch with the latest developments
in the field.29
The FUCI exhibited confidence in the potential of the Christian
message to reach out to all mankind, and not only to the chosen. This
required meeting the challenge of offering a constructive Catholicism,
that took note that ‘beyond ourselves there … exist vivid and ardent
aspirations in the human heart, and not only beings that are immobile
and that lay paralysed by their selfishness and bestiality’.30 While it would
constitute a conceptual mistake to speak of a true spirit of ecumenism
in the FUCI of the 1930s, this confident and optimistic wish to reach
out to those outside of Catholicism, reflected a sense and commitment
to engage in dialogue with contemporary men and women in an effort
to construct an alternative Catholic modernity, a modernity that—while
rescuing the dynamic elements of present-day culture—strove to anchor
it to the immutable principles of Catholicism. It was a spirituality embed-
ded in a ‘lived Catholicism’ that led by personal example, rather than by
preaching in an abstract and moralistic fashion. This was an attitude that
perceived piety as a lived element of life, and not as something ‘formalistic,
exterior or sentimental’.31 Consequently, it was necessary to liberate the
religious message from any kind of ‘arid intellectualism that belittles the
self’.32 Indeed, these Italian Catholic intellectuals tried to surmount the
perceived split that existed between theory and practice, depicting them
not as in opposition to one another but as mutually and necessarily rein-
forcing, whereby practice was nothing other than the translation of ideas
and theories.33 Along similar lines, Fausto Montanari underscored the idea
that Catholicism in contemporary times had to be dynamic, active—in
sum, vital and in a constant relationship with the external world. Thus, he
warned against the ‘danger of an abstract mysticism and ascetic by which
we estrange and disengage ourselves from the world, as if we were isolated
individuals and not members of Christ destined to bring the life of Christ
to our times’.34 Catholicism, to be fecund, had to be a dynamic reality, a
constant novelty, a radical choice that permitted no return. Indeed, the
FUCI IDEAS IN THE 1930S: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SPIRITUAL ORDER 125
true Catholic was more recognisable ‘outside rather than inside the tem-
ple’, ‘in his worldly affairs rather than in his prayers’, more ‘in his pleasures
than in his fastings’.35
The FUCI insisted on an optimistic and joyful form of Christian exis-
tence, a life that did not slash every instinct and vitality. The students
energetically rejected any notion of Catholicism that was limited to ‘mere
mortification’.36 In its insistence on joy and optimism, the fucini often
spoke of the ‘smiling soul of the FUCI’ and how it had made of joy a
fundamental norm of its existence.37 In addition, joy entailed a sense of
wonder and surprise in the face of inner-worldly realities as well as an
attention bestowed on the dynamic, subjective, psychological, ethical, and
individual elements of the religious experience. It was the personal ele-
ment of religion or religious phenomenology that had to be rescued, the
edification of the personality, interiority, and Christianity as a form of per-
sonal moral perfection that liberated the true potential of man.38 In this
interest bestowed on the subjective elements of the religious life, great
attention was given to the education of the sentiments and feelings as inte-
gral elements of the Catholic life. It was a way to remove the threat of a
dry and rationalistic Christianity and was deemed an excellent pedagogical
tool for the formation of a robust and manly character.39 Furthermore, the
education of the sentiments was a path to build the interior life of man, in
an equilibrium of mind and will.
Closely connected with these developments was the attention bestowed
on an adequate knowledge of the liturgy as another means of developing
the interior personality and as an agent for the spiritual and moral reju-
venation of contemporary society. Following the latest trends in liturgi-
cal studies,40 especially from France and Germany, as was the case of the
German Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach, the fucini rejected the exces-
sive formalism and exteriority present in many liturgical manifestations.
For the Catholic intellectuals, the true spirit and message of the liturgy
was not contained in its rites, aesthetics, ceremonies, or in the historical
knowledge of the origins of the liturgy. To be a fruitful experience, the
faithful had to ‘live the liturgy’41 in a conscious participation in the collec-
tive and official prayer of the church. Liturgy evoked a ‘nostalgia of God’
and was an ‘education above all of the personality’, an integral formation
of man’.42 Liturgy was depicted as the quotidian and most vital element of
the Christian existence, the means through which men participated in the
life of the church or Mystical Body of Christ. The lay faithful were sup-
posed to participate in the liturgical celebrations, not in a passive manner
126 J. DAGNINO
he lived in was his position when it came to the subject of the Jews. At a
time when Catholic anti-Semitism remained strong in many circles,49 the
Genoese priest courageously and adamantly rejected any notion of anti-
Semitism or anti-Judaism. In an article published in May 1937, Guano
passionately called for ‘the need to come closer to this race to which we
owe so much: we owe it Jesus. We need to cut off every kind of anti-
Semitism from our hearts, even before than in public life.’50
Guano was firmly convinced that every age had its own spirituality, its
own way of comprehending the relationship between the self and the abso-
lute and transcendental. According to the ecclesiastical assistant, the dom-
inant spirituality of his age was the vocation to sanctify everything that was
human. He was convinced that true sanctity was not ‘the duty or privilege
of a few, but is the vocation of every Christian … in whatever condition
of life’.51 In the endeavour to bring every man and woman to the path of
sanctity, Guano attached special importance to the figure of the priest, as
the shepherd who would lead mankind to God. In this respect, a modern
kind of priest was needed to fulfil his mission, attuned to the world and its
needs, capable of presenting Christian dogma to the faithful in a ‘modern,
alive, less defensive and more constructive way’.52 In a similar fashion, the
liturgy and Catholic Action were tools for the sanctification of man. In
sum, what was central in Guano’s religious thought was, once again, the
centrality of the laity and the edification of the internal life. Following this
line of reasoning, the ecclesiastical assistant insisted that theology was not
the reservoir of a handful of priests or scholars but the duty of every one of
the faithful to know and practise it—theology understood as a living faith
which provided the basis for what one believed in. Guano was unyielding
with regard to this aspect: ‘Not a theology for the laity in the sense that
there exists a theology for the clergy and another one for the laity. No,
theology, the only theology, science of the Revelation, is also directed to
the laity, because it is simply made for every Christian.’53 Along similar
lines, the ecclesiastical assistant insisted on the need to go beyond mere
apologetics and give a more historical content to the faith, always with the
aim of rendering more alive and current the life of the faithful: ‘Christian
thought cannot live encapsulated in itself … but is made to communicate
itself to the world and save it. Hence, it must be intelligible to the world
and the men of its time; it is a need to go and respond to the sensibility
of the times.’54 Hence, for Guano it was of the uttermost importance to
renew theological thought, rendering it more accessible and clear to the
128 J. DAGNINO
laity, removing all the elements that made it sound cryptic or esoteric and
thus a dead language for the faithful.
However, as has been said, it was probably in the field of ecclesiology
that Guano made his most lasting legacy. The predominant ecclesiology of
the time was strongly rooted in a Tridentine model. This was based on an
underpinning of the church as a self-contained ‘perfect society’, focusing
primarily on its legal and hierarchical dimensions.55 However, during the
1930s, Emilio Guano and others in the FUCI engaged in a lively debate,
introducing the latest ecclesiological and liturgical currents, most notably
from France and Germany. Authors such as M.D. Chenu, H. Clerissac,
Y. Congar, R. Guardini and C. Marmion were made known, sometimes
for the first time, to a wider audience.
In 1936, Emilio Guano published the widely distributed volume La
Chiesa—a collection of the lessons he had given in his native Genoa to the
FUCI chapter in that city in the academic year 1934–35. At the heart of
Guano’s interpretation of the church was the notion of the institution as
essentially the Mystical Body of Christ,56 the locus where the communion
between men—and between men and God—is realised. Significantly, and
to underscore the communion between men and God, the ecclesiastical
assistant utilised the image of the ‘family’ to refer to the church.57 It was
additionally a reality that was dynamic, open—a living organism in contin-
ual ferment and renewal. Guano spoke of the church as a ‘great building
site in construction, that always has something to add to its construc-
tion’.58 Hence, according to this approach, the Church was not presented
as a static reality above the course of history nor as a militia progressively
and immutably advancing through this ‘valley of tears’, indifferent to the
specific sociocultural realities of the age.
For Guano, the church was the continuation of Christ. Indeed, accord-
ing to the ecclesiastical assistant, ‘the Church is the living Christ amongst
humanity’.59 Equally important was the recognition of a lay priesthood
granted by the sacrament of baptism. This again was a sizeable departure
from much theological teaching of the time. The laity was not depicted
as an unreceptive and undifferentiated body but as a dynamic reality that
could and should engage actively in the most serious religious and cultural
questions of the day. The faithful were able to contribute to the growth
and fulfilment of the religious community.60 Guano’s theology did not
imply an attempt to curtail the hierarchical and monarchical structures
of the church nor, however tentatively, to question the dogma of papal
infallibility. Nevertheless, the emergence and elaboration of the centrality,
FUCI IDEAS IN THE 1930S: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SPIRITUAL ORDER 129
creativity, and dignity of the individual religious subject who was consid-
ered ‘not as a passive bearer but active collaborator of the Lord’61 was,
perhaps, the most lasting spiritual legacy of Emilio Guano and more gen-
erally of the Catholic intellectuals of the era.
Along similar lines, and much in unison with Guano’s views, was the
very momentous and courageous publication of the already-mentioned
article by the subsequently renowned Belgian theologian Yves Congar,
published in three consecutive numbers in Azione fucina during 1935,62
and which had previously appeared in the very influential French periodi-
cal, La Vie intellectuelle. Congar’s contribution was a damning indictment
of a church model based on anathemas and defensive mental attitudes
that had brought about a very regrettable ‘hiatus between faith and life’.63
Congar’s argument struck at the heart of the Tridentine model: ‘Since
the disruption of the Reformation the Church lives under a true state
of siege. After a crisis … police and security measures are taken: in this
way, in the Church, manifestations of original thought are subjugated …
Unquestionably, initiatives are hampered; above all, the laity does not dare
to engage in bolder action, nor express ideas that are more personal.’64 As
such, the theologian was very pessimistic about the institutional church
after the modernist crisis and the actions taken by Pius X that have resulted
in ‘a narrow conformism that dominated ecclesiastical teaching’65 and
have produced a fundamental estrangement from the modern world:
‘an immense part of human activity, a whole generation of humanity, of
human flesh, modern life with science, with its miseries and greatnesses,
has been deprived of the Incarnation of the Verb’.66 Catholicism could not
be a ‘group apart’ nor a ‘sect’67 if it wanted to embrace the fluidity and
complexities of modern life. Congar finished his article by admonishing
the church to embrace everything that was human and implicitly chal-
lenging Pius XI’s grandiose hierocratical plans: ‘politics of presence; not a
politics of prestige at the service of some ecclesiastical imperialism’.68
Notes
1. S. Paronetto, Ascetica dell’uomo d’azione (Rome, 1948), 13. This is a
collection of Sergio Paronetto’s interwar and wartime writings. On
Paronetto see M.L. Paronetto Valier, Sergio Paronetto. Libertà d’iniziativa
e giustizia sociale (Rome, 1991).
2. R. Moro, ‘Religion and Politics in the Time of Secularisation: The
Sacralisation of Politics and the Politicisation of Religion’, Totalitarian
Movements and Political Religions, 6/1 (2005), 71–86.
3. F. De Giorgi, ‘Linguaggi totalitari e retorica dell’intransigenza: Chiesa,
metafora militare e strategie educative’ in L. Pazzaglia (ed.), Chiesa, cul-
tura e educazione in Italia tra le due guerre (Brescia, 2003), 60.
4. Igino Giordani, ‘Valore apologetico della letteratura narrativa’, Studium,
5 (1933).
5. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La professione da un punto di vista spirituale’,
Studium, 1 (1934).
6. Adriano Bernareggi (1884–1953) was ordained in 1907. Between 1923
and 1926 he taught ecclesiastical law at the Catholic University of Milan.
He collaborated in the most important religious journals of his age. In
1936 he was designated as bishop of Bergamo. Additionally, between
1934 and 1953 he was ecclesiastical assistant of the Movimento Laureati,
the movement for Catholic graduates where most fucini entered upon
the receipt of the laurea. On Bernareggi, see, for example, A. Bernareggi,
Professsione, Cultura Società (Rome, 1954) and Adriano Bernareggi
Vescovo di Bergamo 1932–1953 (Bergamo, 1979).
7. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La Moralità nella professione’, Studium, 3–4 (1935).
8. Paolo Emilio Taviani, ‘Religione e cultura’, Azione fucina, 14 January 1934.
9. Igino Righetti, ‘Ragioni di un compito nuovo’, Studium, 1 (1934).
10. Giulio Bevilacqua, ‘Esperienza grande via del ritorno’, Studium, 8–9 (1939).
11. This is a mistake made by some scholars. For example, Jone Gaillard goes
as far as affirming that Catholic Action differed little in its totalitarian
nature from the Fascist Party itself. See his ‘The Attractions of Fascism
for the Church of Rome’ in J. Milfull (ed.), The Attractions of Fascism.
Social Psychology and Aesthetics of the ‘Triumph of the Right’ (New York,
Oxford and Munich, 1990), 207–14.
12. For a succinct comparison of the different spiritualities present in Catholic
Action in interwar Italy see L. Caimi, ‘Modelli educativi dell’associazionismo
136 J. DAGNINO
41. Elisa Rossi, ‘Il valore formativo della liturgia’, Azione fucina, 12 July
1936.
42. Ibid.
43. G. Moglia, ‘Rassegne’, Studium, 2 (1935).
44. Mention should be made of Guano’s excellent command of the German
language.
45. R. A. Krieg, Catholic Theologians in Nazi Germany (New York and
London, 2004) and W. Spael, La Germania cattolica nel XX secolo
(1890–1945) (Rome, 1974).
46. Emilio Guano, ‘Spiritualità’, Studium, 11 (1935).
47. Ibid.
48. E. Guano, ‘Verità e vita’, Studium, 7–8 (1935).
49. The bibliography on the history of Catholic anti-Semitism is vast. See, for
example, F. J. Coppa, The Papacy, the Jews, and the Holocaust (Washington
D.C., 2008); R. Moro, La Chiesa e lo sterminio degli ebrei (Bologna,
2002); and D. I. Kertzer, The Popes against the Jews. The Vatican’s role in
the rise of modern anti-Semitism (New York, 2001).
50. E. Guano, ‘I Giudei e Gesù’, Studium, 5 (1937).
51. E. Guano, ‘Spiritualità’, Studium, 11 (1935).
52. E. Guano, ‘Attorno a Cristo’, Studium, 2 (1936).
53. E.Guano, ‘Teologia per i laici’, Studium, 11–12 (1938).
54. E. Guano, ‘Indirizzi storici’, Studium, 2 (1937).
55. Good overviews on the mainstream ecclesiology during the pontificate of
Pius XI can be found in M. Agostino, Le pape Pie XI et l’opinion
(1922–1939) (Rome, 1991), 82ff and G. Martina, ‘L’Ecclesiologia prev-
alente nel pontificato di Pio XI’, in A. Monticone (ed.), Cattolici e fascisti
in Umbria (1922–1945) (Bologna, 1978), 221–44.
56. The notion of the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ had been tim-
idly advanced during the First Vatican Council, but had not been favour-
ably received. It would be only during the 1920s that it acquired new
momentum.
57. E. Guano, La Chiesa (appunti di lezioni) (Rome, 1936), 24–5.
58. Ibid., 138.
59. E. Guano, La teologia nella vita sacerdotale (Brescia, 1939), 141.
60. E. Guano, La Chiesa, 99–100.
61. Ibid.
62. The article was published under the significant title ‘Il mondo moderno
e la fede. Cause dell’incredulità contemporanea’ in the issues of 20
October, 3 November, and 17 November 1935.
63. Ibid., 20 October 1935.
64. Ibid., 17 November 1935.
65. Ibid.
FUCI IDEAS IN THE 1930S: THE SEARCH FOR A NEW SPIRITUAL ORDER 139
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., 20 October 1935.
68. Ibid., 17 November 1935.
69. ‘Rassegne’, Azione fucina, 29 January 1933.
70. Carlo Bo, ‘Letteratura come vita’, Il Frontespizio, September 1938. Carlo
Bo (1911–2001) was one of the most prominent contributors of the
Florentine journal Il Frontespizio, alongside Giovanni Papini, Giuseppe
de Luca, Piero Bargellini, Mario Luzi, Ottone Rosai and Giorgio
Morandi. The article above mentioned contained the theoretical funda-
mentals of what would become hermetic poetry. This was to become a
strong poetical movement comprising important poets, such as Salvatore
Quasimodo and Eugenio Montale. Additionally, Bo was chancellor of the
University of Urbino from 1947 for more than 50 years.
71. For good overviews on literature in Fascist Italy, see, for example,
G. Ferroni, Storia e testi della letteratura italiana. Guerre e fascismo
(1910–1945) (Città di Castello, 2004); G. Manacorda, Storia della let-
teratura contemporanea 1900–1940 (Rome, 1999); and G. Luti, La let-
teratura del ventennio fascista (Florence, 1972).
72. Filomena Brocchieri, ‘Tempo di costruire’, Azione fucina, 12 March
1933.
73. For the realist trend, see R. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities. Italy,
1922–1945 (Berkeley and London, 2001), 46–69; G. Langella, Il secolo
delle riviste (Milan, 1982); and C. De Michelis, Alle origini del neoreal-
ismo (Cosenza, 1980).
74. Egidio Cabianca, ‘Ha ragione Bontempelli’, Studium, 7–8 (1933).
75. For Italian attitudes to America in the period under study, see, for exam-
ple, the relevant chapters in Victoria de Grazia’s Irresistible Empire.
America’s advance through 20th century Europe, (Cambridge Mass., and
London, 2005); D. Saresella, Cattolicesimo Italiano e sfida Americana
(Brescia, 2001); M. Beynet, L’image de l’Amérique dans la culture ital-
ienne de l’entre deux guerres, 3 vols (Aix-en-Provence, 1990); and
E. Gentile, ‘Impending Modernity: Fascism and the ambivalent image of
the United States’, Journal of Contemporary History, 28/1 (1993), 7–29.
76. P. A. Vermeersch, ‘l’attualità dell’enciclica’, Studium, 5–6 (1931), in
which the author triumphantly proclaims that his time had ‘forever over-
thrown the liberal economy’.
77. E. M., ‘Lettere dall’estero. Le deficienze della mentalità americana’,
Studium, 2.
78. A. Zamboldi, ‘Furore, di John Steinbeck’, Azione fucina, 23 June 1940.
79. Abi, ‘Quattro romanzi’, Studium, 6 (1940).
140 J. DAGNINO
80. For the Baudelairian conception of modernity, see the fine analysis by
M. Berman in his All that is solid melts into air. The experience of moder-
nity (London and New York, 1983), 131–71.
81. O. S., ‘Due libri americani’. Azione fucina, 30 April 1933.
82. Ibid.
83. Ibid.
84. Ibid.
85. Fausto Montanari, ‘Umanesimo cristiano’, Azione fucina, 5 March 1933.
86. G. G, ‘I giovani e il cattolicismo’, Azione fucina, 9 November 1933.
87. S. Schwartz, The Matrix of Modernism: Pound, Eliot and early Twentieth
Century Thought (Princeton, 1985), 4–6.
88. Giuseppe A. Maria Nini, ‘…e su di una protesta’, Azione fucina, 27 May
1934.
89. Nerio Benzi, ‘Sulla goliardia’, Azione fucina, 27 May 1934.
90. Nicola Ciancio, ‘Goliardia ed apostolato’, Azione fucina, 22 December
1935.
91. G. Papini, Storia di Cristo in Cristo e Santi (Milan, 1962), 29.
92. F. Piemontese, ‘Gianfalco e la giovinezza’, Azione fucina, 25 March 1934.
93. Ibid.
94. Vittore Branca, ‘Lo spirito nella vita’, Azione fucina, 26 January 1936.
95. Vittorio Favilli, ‘Vincenzo Picotti’, Azione fucina, 8 March 1936.
96. Don Cojazzi, ‘Don Bosco: il grande Santo italiano’, Azione fucina, 1
April 1934.
97. Uberto Breganze, ‘La modernità di Don Bosco’, Azione fucina, 22 April
1934.
98. A. R. Jervolino, ‘Il nostro patrono’, Gioventù nova, 5 April 1934.
99. Paolo Barale, ‘Don Bosco e l’ottocento’, Studium, 3 (1934).
100. Frassati was beatified by John Paul II in 1990.
101. M. S. Gillet O. P., ‘Pier Giorgio Frassati presentato come modello’,
Gioventù nova, 3 April 1932.
102. ‘Pier Giorgio Frassati’, Azione fucina, 1 April 1934.
103. A. Cojazzi, ‘Cristianesimo operoso’, Azione fucina, 3 July 1938.
104. Spectator (Alcide de Gasperi), ‘Novità e azione’, Studium, 5 (1935).
105. Ibid.
106. Ibid.
CHAPTER 8
Imbued with this novel sense of a total Catholicism that had to penetrate
and embrace every facet of life, the international and national order could
not be an exception to this state of affairs. This trend was in part a reac-
tion to the rise of the different political religions on the continent as well
as the perceived epochal crisis of civilisation, but it also had its own inner
dynamic and momentum. Above all, the fucini envisaged a new post-
liberal and post-bourgeois international and national order that would
revolve around a block of Catholic authoritarian states that closely fol-
lowed the directives of the supreme pontiff regarding the social order as
expressed in his encyclicals and other related documents. There was no
question for the vast majority of the Catholic students that liberal and
democratic forms of government were outdated manifestations of societal
organisation, more representative of the nineteenth century than suitable
for the dynamic times in which they were living. Indeed, parliamentary
democracy was frequently criticised and attacked for not offering a suit-
able path for the nationalisation of the masses and for having failed to
provide a deeper relationship between leaders and followers. Furthermore,
what they perceived as the agnosticism of the liberal state could only gen-
erate disorder and neglect of the values of justice and a sense of collective
identity. In the end, what was lacking in the old form of political and
social organisation was a sense of mission able to offer citizens a concept
of destiny and a path of personal and collective fulfilment. In addition, in
its most extreme cases, the fucini saw in the agnosticism of the democratic
order a path to anti-clericalism, as they believed was the case in their day
in Spain and France in particular.
Undeniably, for many in the association the crisis of democracy was one
aspect of a wider crisis of civilisation faced by the West. Among the writ-
ers and intellectuals of the federation one can sense a mixture of fear and
despair at the present conditions, but also a sort of ‘faith’ and optimism as
to the possible outcome of the crisis, as it offered exciting new possibili-
ties for a new world order where Christianity would once again assume
its rightful place. Indeed, for many in the organisation the demise of the
democratic order was a necessary prerequisite for a more humane order to
flourish. For Angelo Grazioli, the civilisation of ‘democratic mechanism’
had to recede and disappear so as to prevent further chaos and miseries
for mankind. In his view, ‘the march of our democratic, mechanistic, and
industrial order has become truly infernal … where overproduction gener-
ates unemployment’, and where ‘the armies of jobless mean hunger and
misery, and these are elements of revolution and intestinal wars’.1 Others
noted, with a barely hidden sense of triumphalism, how Europe was expe-
riencing the demise of the principles of 1789 and the ‘Great Revolution’.2
What was most deplorable in the eyes of many Catholic intellectuals about
the liberal version of democracy was its alienating and corrosive effects
upon the nature and unity of man. According to the perspective of the
fucini, liberal democracy through its initially legitimate aim of distinguish-
ing the public and private spheres had degenerated into a nearly schizo-
phrenic separatism, whether in the moral, political, social, or cultural
spheres, thus leaving its citizens devoid of the necessary unifying vision
of life.3 Particularly grave was liberal democracy’s attempt to detach poli-
tics from religious and ethical considerations. Even a man such as Father
Giulio Bevilacqua, Montini’s close friend and certainly no reactionary
figure, had serious misgivings when it came to the existing democracies
of his time. While acknowledging the tremendous material achievements
produced and facilitated by democracy, Bevilacqua saw its main limitations
as lying in its spiritual void, in it having ignored ‘the profound connec-
tion between the external and internal world, between the human and the
divine world’, with the ensuing result that the modern world enacted by
liberal democracy had produced ‘the current fatal unbalance between a
body that has become adult and a soul that if it has not remained child-
like has become struck by infantile paralysis’.4 Furthermore, the pluralistic
principle championed by liberal democracy in practice tended to place on
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 143
citizen and member of the faithful.26 This helps to explain the admiration
bestowed on Ireland’s constitution as an example of a modern state that
had demonstrated respect towards Catholicism and religion in general.
They praised Ireland’s constitutional text for speaking of religious worship
as a ‘duty’ of the state and for its invocation of the Holy Trinity in the pref-
ace of the text.27 The Jesuit Enrico Rosa lavished praise on Ireland’s new
constitution for ‘recognising the Catholic religion as the true religion of
the Irish nation, not only tolerated but protected by the state’. The Italian
priest went on to state his hopes that these events would help to usher in
a ‘new era for the life of the Church and its beneficial activity among civil
society’.28
Similarly, the fucini had no problems in siding with the Nationalist
cause during the Spanish Civil War. Franco was praised for reinstating civil
recognition of the sacrament of marriage in Nationalist Spain as well as
heralding a new era made possible by ‘the blood of the nationalist mar-
tyrs’.29 Indeed, in the eyes of many in the organisation, a ‘new type of
state’ was emerging, one that would lead the Iberian Peninsula to an ‘open
and integral state confessionalism’.30 Furthermore, in the momentous and
bloody struggle taking place, the Nationalists were extolled for being
motivated ‘not by materialist concerns’ but, on the contrary, for being
‘animated and guided by the spirit’.31 The Spanish Civil War seemed to
confirm once again that interwar Europe was witnessing a colossal fight
between the forces of Christ and the Anti-Christ, all rendered more dra-
matic by what they perceived as the immense religious violence unleashed
on the Iberian Peninsula. The fucini clearly recognised the importance of
symbols in the war and thus celebrated the fact that, for example, Franco’s
ministers pledged their allegiance to the Nationalist government in front
of the crucifix and the Bible.32
However, it was probably the young state of Austria that most ignited the
imagination of the fucini with regard to the possibility of a new European
order based on a rejuvenated and reinvigorated sense of Catholicism,
especially in the martyr-like figure of Engelbert Dollfuss, ‘tenacious and
heroic realiser of this programme’.33 The new authoritarian constitution
of 1934 was seen as nothing less than the embarking on the ‘path of
the new authoritarian State’.34 Austria had become an authoritarian state
thanks to the Christian Social Party. The majority of this party shared in its
criticism of democracy and the parliamentary form of government, which
were depicted as expressions of individualism and selfishness, as well as
embodying a mechanistic conception of justice, liberty, and equality. All
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 147
of the state, where the latter was seen as not much more than as a guaran-
tor of individual and collective rights. As will be shown, during the 1930s
this all changed. A new culture of the state emerged. Once again the influ-
ence of Fascism was of paramount importance in this respect. During this
decade the fucini espoused the vision of a strong, authoritarian, and tech-
nocratic state, all within their vision of an alternative Catholic modernity.
The liberal conception of the state now seemed insufficient in light of the
demands and challenges that the world and Italy were confronting in the
post-1929 age, especially in the presence of an expanding mass society,
all of which required, in the eyes of the Catholic intellectuals, a new and
more robust state organisation.
In a nutshell, and at the risk of sounding slightly schematic, the Catholic
students of the 1930s underwent a transition whereby they became more
than believers—they became citizens. As the ecclesiastical assistant Adriano
Bernareggi cogently expressed it, the time had come for the university stu-
dents to become ‘Catholic citizens and not just Catholics who happen to
be citizens’.42
objective of filling the perceived gap existing between the world of the
church and the modern world. Moreover, the liberal professions, from
a strictly religious point of view, offered a path of sanctification, a pre-
cious ‘help towards one’s own moral perfection’.46 The professions were
depicted as much more than a simple way to earn a living. They were pre-
sented as vocations, as callings to build the interior personality—one of the
subjects, as we have seen, dearest to the intellectuals of Catholic Action.
Every professional had to give to his undertakings a profound Catholic
and religious orientation. It was also an exercise of charity towards one’s
brothers and of fulfilling God’s will on earth.47
A crucial aspect in the engagement of the intellectuals of Catholic Action
with the modern world and their own version of modernity was undoubt-
edly represented by their approach to technology. In many ways, the
Catholic intellectuals’ approach to technology was similar to the ideal-type
construction elaborated by Jeffrey Herf to describe the so-called ‘reaction-
ary modernists’ of Weimar and Nazi Germany, who aimed at incorporating
technology within the world of German Kultur.48 Indeed, one of Herf’s
‘reactionary modernists’ was the University of Frankfurt’s radiologist
Friederich Dessauer.49 In 1934, the Italian publisher Morcelliana, which
enjoyed very close ties with the FUCI, translated Dessauer’s monograph
Philosophie der Technik,50 which proved to be extremely influential among
Italian Catholics of the time.51 Dessauer called for the development of a
proper and true philosophy of technology. Some Italians went even fur-
ther, like the ecclesiastical assistant Adriano Bernareggi, who advocated
a ‘theology of technology’ that would show ‘the paths through which
one can ascend to God … and rediscover the wisdom and potency in
technology’.52 Unlike many cultural alarmists of the time who tended to
blame technology for much of the perceived moral and spiritual bank-
ruptcy of Western civilisation, these intellectuals highlighted its liberating
and uplifting qualities. Technology and its machines had not crushed the
natural qualities of men nor enslaved them in a repetitive series of alienat-
ing acts. The monotony to be found in much industrial labour was to be
ascribed not to technology itself to the lack thereof.53 Technology had
freed man from the most degrading and servile endeavours, permitting
him a dominion unknown to previous generations. In this sense, there was
no room for the romanticising of the supposed past golden ages. While
there were still some writers in the federation who looked with admiration
to their vision of the Middle Ages, many now did not indulge in that myth
that was so common among sizeable sectors of European Catholics. Their
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 151
world and assume the leadership that was expected from them in a modern
industrial society. To further this aim a shift in cultural politics was needed
in the sense of moving away from the very Italian emphasis and privileging
of theoretical knowledge over its practical version. This was a modern sen-
sitivity in the sense that knowledge in the twentieth century largely made
sense if it was operational and ‘vital’, connected to the complexities of
daily vicissitudes. As such, engineers had to be at the forefront of intellec-
tual, political, and social life in a similar fashion to Jeffrey Herf’s Weimar’s
engineers as ‘cultural ideologues’.61 The engineer had to be acknowledged
as an intellectual in his own right and as a representative of a most power-
ful new form of sainthood, indeed as the ‘most suited to form the new
ruling class in every political and social activity of a nation’.62 It was a call
to refashion the traditional power structures and relationships of Italian
society that had customarily been in the hands of university professors,
civil servants, and especially lawyers.
Technology further encouraged the inventiveness of engineers. Indeed,
technology was presented as a fundamental school of virtues. Through
inventiveness, men edified and fortified their personality, which educated
them to focus on the essential, to renounce capriciousness and the futile
in the wholesome devotion to technical labour. As Dessauer wrote of the
purifying qualities of technological endeavour: ‘it eliminates every caprice,
every weakness, every vanity and that does not happen in other profes-
sions’.63 But, above all, it was a most powerful demonstration of altruism,
as engineers and other technicians, at their best, acted for the common
interest and not—as the liberal capitalist—for selfish personal reasons.
Indeed, liberal capitalism was presented as the enemy of true entrepre-
neurs and inventors for its materialistic individualism, whereas true ‘tech-
nological’ men were fuelled by vitality and dynamism. Indeed, technology
was perceived as a rejection of the liberal capitalist economic order.
Technology was additionally presented as a formidable tool of social
well-being and social equality, offering to the most deprived sectors of
the population a path to a civilised and more comfortable existence. A
more ‘organic’ community was also a product of technology as every spe-
cialised labour was executed for the good of the whole. It ensured a soci-
ety based upon solidarity, ‘where every individual will feel that he does
not exist alone, but thousands work and sacrifice themselves for him’.64
Furthermore, technology had the power to ‘democratise’ society and
integrate otherwise isolated individuals through its myriad inventions.
The telephone, for example, made possible the apparently mysterious
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 153
offering a more peaceful social order, for allegedly abolishing class warfare,
for respecting the ‘natural’ hierarchies in social and political life, for hav-
ing abolished strikes and disruptive demonstrations—in sum, for having
secured social and political peace.94 Indeed, for many in the organisation,
the new corporate order seemed to promise the possibility of a deeper and
more meaningful participation in the life of the nation, whether in the
social, economic, or political spheres. It was a path for the nationalisation
of the masses, of transforming them into active and conscious citizens.
Similarly, it was, in the eyes of many a fucino, a way of involving people
more directly in public affairs, a post-liberal and modern form of han-
dling economic and political conflict, as well as a method of creating more
durable and rewarding relationships between government and the led, all
with the aim of constituting a system of ‘participatory totalitarianism’, as
David D. Roberts has aptly termed it.95 Additionally, the Catholic students
took pride in what they believed to be corporativism’s national character,
an expression, as Franco Feroldi put it, of ‘Latin wisdom and rectitude’.96
In line with the corporativist developments, one of the most striking
aspects of Italian Catholicism of the 1930s was the ‘discovery’ of the state.
Fascists and Catholics alike shared a conception of the ‘organic state’ that
gave shape and informed the corporations. While some Catholic writers
in the FUCI press, such as the Jesuit Angelo Brucculeri, were at pains
to differentiate Catholic corporations from other corporativist ideas,97 in
the sense that Catholic corporativism drew its principal source of inspira-
tion from the social encyclicals of the popes, most fucini tended to follow
the main currents within Fascism as a more suitable alternative for their
own vision of modernity, most noticeably in their conception of an ever-
larger state. Even Lodovico Montini, the brother of Giovanni Battista, was
forced to admit that corporativism, while not destroying or erasing the
intermediate bodies of society, presupposed a ‘strong state and a powerful
government’.98 Indeed, for Lodovico Montini, corporativism in his day
was becoming a fourth power of the state99 and a superior synthesis of
nation, economics, and politics that existed beyond the immediate realm
of profit for the ‘greatest development of the personality of every man’.100
At the heart of this confident attitude towards the state—in this case a
Fascist state—was the conviction among many fucini that the individual
could realise his ultimate potential in the state without, for that matter,
losing his sense of individuality. In the contemporary era, as Giuseppe
Averna wrote, the bond of the individual to the state had to be ‘intimate
and substantial’.101 Furthermore, according to many in the federation, it
158 J. DAGNINO
was the state that constituted and created the nation, informing it with its
principles and giving it its hierarchical nature. For Arsenio Frugone there
was no doubt: only the concrete will of the nation could realise itself in the
‘ethical plenitude of the State’.102
While these Catholics obviously stressed that the state existed for the
human person, it was the ‘discovery’ of the state that constituted the nov-
elty of the 1930s. Some in the FUCI, such as Gino Ferroni, even endorsed
without any hesitations the Fascist conception of the state. For Ferroni,
the Fascist state historically represented the overcoming of the liberal ver-
sion of the state, and from simple guardian of the public order it had now
become the agent of an ethical ideal, in which the state itself was elevated
to the category of a reason for living.103 The state was therefore not the
mere sum of its citizens but had a value all of its own.104 And, in the eco-
nomic sphere, by the end of the 1930s there was no doubt among the vast
majority of the fucini and those in its ‘sister’ organisation, the Movimento
Laureati, that the state, in its post-liberal version, had to have a ‘decisive
and organic intervention’, that responded not only to a contingency such
as the crisis of 1929 but was an expression of the ‘normalcy of economic
life’.105 Moreover, for many Catholic intellectuals, the totalitarian state
enacted by Mussolini presupposed anything but a lifeless uniformity or
crushing of the individual’s creative energies. The totalitarian-corporative
state implied for many fucini a greater degree of true freedom and ethi-
cal participation in the destinies of the nation. The new corporative order
took the citizen not as an abstract entity—as was the case in old-fashion
liberalism or socialism—but as a labourer or producer and, hence, ‘as an
active participant in the life of the State’.106
Some went even further and embraced the notion of the autarchic
state. In this development, the condemnation of Italy by the League of
Nations after the invasion of Ethiopia in 1935 played a role. But it was
not merely this event that pushed some in the association to advocate
autarchy. There was something more profound and constant, related to
the quest for an alternative modernity pursued by these Catholic intel-
lectuals. Autarchy was not solely about developing the conditions for a
self-sufficient and self-contained economic order. It was, above all, the
nationalisation of economic forces and the subordinating of them to the
political interests of the nation that lay at its root. In addition, autarchy
was presented as a tool for nation-building, for creating a more compact
nation state, based on the principle of national solidarity and a ‘unitarian
and totalitarian discipline of production’ that rendered more effective the
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 159
his compatriots ‘of our privilege of being Italians and that is, of belong-
ing to that healthy people that thanks to Fascism has become immune
from extremist aberrations’.110 Fascism was responsible for the rejuvena-
tion and reinvigoration of the nation and its citizens. Indeed, for some,
such as Giuseppe De Luca, the principal merit of the Italian prime minister
was to have ‘awoken the consciences of youth and given them an ener-
getic breath, an impetus, a force’.111 Fascism was viewed by many Catholic
intellectuals of the 1930s as representing a world view irreconcilable with
either socialism or liberalism. Fascism possessed a moral and political idea
of man and society that did not deny personality but, on the contrary,
empowered it within the realm of the new state.112
It has been shown how both the FUCI and the Movimento Lauerati
in general enthusiastically supported the regime’s war effort in Ethiopia
and ensuing proclamation of the Italian Empire in May 1936. As has been
already stated, in this realm the myth of a ‘Catholic Italy’ played a crucial
role in generating a consensus of support for the enterprise among the
Catholic intellectuals. The support given by the FUCI to the Italian gov-
ernment was further enhanced after the sanctions approved by the League
of Nations against Italy, which served as a further boost for the national-
ism of the young Catholics. Adriano Bernareggi, for example, was furious
‘against this injustice’ and called for a unanimous appeal and protest to be
made by the Italian Catholic world.113 Even Igino Righetti, certainly not
one of the most radicalised patriots, was critical of fellow Catholics from
other nations—especially France—who had condemned Italy’s incur-
sion in the African continent. He spoke of their criticisms as ‘doctrinaire
definitions’ and as ‘abstract and partial’.114 Others, like Augusto Baroni,
had harsh words for the French philosopher and theologian Jacques
Maritain, who had been one of the leading spokesmen within interna-
tional Catholicism against Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia.115 Indeed, one of
the most important consequences of the Ethiopian war was the rift it cre-
ated between the FUCI and the French Catholic world, which had been
rich and fecund in contacts and influence during the Montini administra-
tion. To a large extent, after Ethiopia the FUCI endeavoured to follow
a line of ‘autarchy’ in cultural affairs as well. Augusto Baroni, one of the
leaders of the Movimenti Laureati in Bologna, as well as a close collabora-
tor of the FUCI, was utterly convinced that the proclamation of the Italian
Empire had signalled the dawn of a new era in the history of the peninsula,
whereby Italy would once again recover its role of moral and spiritual pri-
macy in Western civilisation. Baroni was convinced that Italian Catholics,
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 161
world view. In any case, the fucini rapidly realised that, if they wanted to
be actively involved in the life of the nation as Catholic intellectuals, they
had to participate in the competitions. Even a Catholic who was no friend
of the regime, like Giorgio La Pira, recognised this reality.122 Writing to
Righetti on 1 May 1934, after the first series of littoriali had been cel-
ebrated in Florence, he commented: ‘I have attended the littoriali of cul-
ture and I have said to myself: here is an endeavour in which the FUCI will
have to participate with enthusiasm and preparedness.’123
Igino Righetti responded the very following day, agreeing in essence
with La Pira’s ideas:
I have also followed with vivid interest the Littoriali of Florence … For
those of this year we have asked for the participation of those comrades that
for their preparation could most suitably participate, also from the perspec-
tive of our position of thought and of life.124
was understood by the most radical and intransigent Fascists. The racist
legislation must also be placed in the context of the wider efforts of the
regime to create the new Italian man and woman, and the concomitant
battle against the ‘bourgeoisie’ to change the mental attitudes and behav-
iours of the population at large, since, in this context, the Jew was consid-
ered to be bourgeois par excellence.149
One cannot speak of a straightforward or linear response to these devel-
opments by the intellectuals of Catholic Action. A plurality of voices, some-
times contradicting each other, emerged with regard to these sensitive
issues, especially in relation to the persecution of the Jewish community.150
These reflected the way in which the crisis became an amalgamation of a
number of points at issue between the regime and the Catholic associa-
tions. These concerned the nature of Catholic youth organisations and
their use of visual imagery. But it became associated with a number of
other issues, including the Fascist self-presentation as a political religion.
As Paolo Orano, a major Fascist theoretician, expressed it during these
turbulent times, ‘in Fascism there is a religious becoming. The Fascist
state cannot be conceived, believed, served and glorified but religiously.’151
With regard to the specific racist legislation approved by Mussolini’s gov-
ernment, though it did contradict and cause concern in some Catholic
consciences, not least on the part of Pius XI, the main motive for dispute
in this regard concerned the prohibition of the so-called mixed marriages
and the protection of converted Jews, which constituted a flagrant vulnus
of the concordat of 1929.
In relation to the intellectuals of Catholic Action, we have already men-
tioned the forceful and courageous rejection of any kind of anti-Semitism
on the part of the ecclesiastical assistant Emilio Guano. Others, such as the
national president of the federation between 1933 and 1939, Giovanni
Ambrosetti, displayed a favourable attitude to the historical development
of Zionism, agreeing with and finding reasonable many of its demands,
speaking, for example, of Theodor Herzl’s ‘great heart’.152 Others, how-
ever, like Guido Lami, reporting on the protests of French students
against the overcrowding of their university by foreign nationals, noted
how the problem also existed, and was severe, in Italy. Among the national
minorities present in Fascist Italy, Lami drew attention to the presence of
foreign Jews and energetically declared that he was ‘very sceptical as to the
usefulness of assimilating these foreigners; and we are also sceptical about
their political, institutional and cultural assimilation’.153 In another article,
Lami went even further: again protesting about the alleged o vercrowding
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 167
With regard to the other aspect to the crisis of 1938, that is regarding
the vexed and by now old question of who was principally in charge of
the education of the young, and which manifested itself under the pretext
of the prohibition by the Fascist authorities of the visual symbols used by
members of Catholic Action, such as badges and berets, the discourse was
similarly complex and variegated. As a security measure, for example, the
central ecclesiastical assistant of the organisation, Guido Anichini, advised
the fucini not to wear their traditional berets at the national congress
to be celebrated in Genoa in September 1938.158 Nevertheless, it would
be a mistake to portray the FUCI of these years as constituting a united
front against Fascism or the crisis of 1938–39 as a sort of massive wake-up
call to the consciences of vast numbers of fucini that would subsequently
lead them down the path of anti-Fascism. Above all, what is most striking
about the crisis of 1938–39 is the fact that for many fucini it was not felt
as a major disturbance or challenge to their apostolate, let alone an occa-
sion to break their ties with the regime. At most it was felt as an occasion
to show with pride their identity as Catholic youth. But one should not
forget that most of the fucini in this period were also members of the
Fascist University Groups.
This complex attitude was evident in the circular that the then national
president of the association, Aldo Moro, sent to FUCI groups in June
1939 in which he reported that many fucini, while wearing the visual
symbols of the organisation, neglected the use of the Fascist University
Groups badges. He noted how this was an obvious provocation to the
regime, and how, in the long run, it would end up ‘creating in the Party
headquarters an unfavourable appreciation with regard to the FUCI and
to Catholic Action in general’.159 Moro was undoubtedly being concilia-
tory, trying to avoid a major escalation that could only jeopardise the
association’s mission and activities. That is why, though he did not recom-
mend the removal of the visual symbols of Catholic Action in general, he
nevertheless advised against their use in party headquarters and Fascist
demonstrations in general.160
The attitudes and response to this issue varied greatly according to
the different FUCI branches. An anonymous student from the branch
of Turin reported that their members who participated in the regime’s
Gioventù Italiania del Littorio had experienced pressures to remove from
their clothing the visual symbols pertaining to Catholic Action and to
wear only official party badges. However, he hastened to add, ‘this we
have promptly done, as our relationship with the GUF is more than
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 169
good’.161 Gigi Franchella, for his part, writing to Moro from Ferrara,
reported that the issue in that city had been resolved through simply not
using the symbols of Catholic Action, in order to avoid further troubles.162
Then again, there were others like Salvatore Marconi, from the branch of
Sassari, who complained that the local fucini were using only the Fascist
symbols while neglecting the use of those of the FUCI.163 As can be seen
from this small sample of responses to the impasse with the regime, no
uniform front emerged among the intellectuals of Catholic Action. And
indeed, for a generation who had entirely grown up under the sign of the
littorio, it would have been very difficult indeed to find a united front of
anti-Fascism among the Catholic students. Moreover, the years 1938–39
witnessed other important endorsements of the policies and practices of
the regime. More than anything, the stature of Mussolini as a statesman
grew during this period. The year 1939 saw the celebration of the 10th
anniversary of the signing of the Lateran Pacts. Il Duce was duly praised
for his role in the initiative, as ‘the statesman to whom the merit is owed
of having gone to the encounter, in his great plan of unity and national
renaissance, to the designs of Providence’.164 Another initiative of the
government of this period that received wide attention and praise in the
Catholic intellectual press was the so-called Carta della Scuola—legisla-
tion approved in 1939 and prepared by the then Minister of Education
Giuseppe Bottai, and which attempted a wholesale subordination of the
educational system to the political, economic and social demands of the
regime.165 Augusto Baroni, for example, was personally pleased that such
a delicate task had been given to Bottai.166 Baroni went on to extol the
carta’s proposed intimate collaboration between school and family in the
sphere of national education, and for its introduction of manual labour
at the schools.167 He further praised Bottai’s conception of Romanità,
which the Bolognese leader described in glowing terms as ‘an energy and
a complex of attitudes that are characteristic of our people and that must
be nurtured, educated, augmented’.168
Unquestionably, however, it was the Munich Agreement of September
1938 that served to raise the dignity of Mussolini as a supreme and wise
statesman among many Catholic intellectuals. This failed attempt to
appease Hitler’s policy of territorial expansionism was received with true
jubilation by many fucini. With genuine joy they received what they saw
as the triumph of peace in the face of imminent war and destruction, a
triumph ‘owed in great measure to the workings of the Head of the Italian
Government’ and his national and international prestige.169 Augusto
170 J. DAGNINO
Baroni, as usual, was more eloquent. In his mind, il Duce had prevented
the demise of Western civilisation and shown his nature as a true great
leader. With an optimism that would soon seem rather rash, he waxed
eloquently: ‘Today everything is new, everything begins again. That which
remains is the historic mission of our stirpe.’170
Notes
1. Sac. Angelo Grazioli, ‘Recensioni’, Studium, 2 (1934).
2. F. Pérez Rodríguez, ‘Cultura spagnola d’oggi’, Azione fucina, 17 October
1931.
3. See especially the contribution by the vice-ecclesiastical assistant Adriano
Bernareggi, ‘La moralità nella professione’, Studium, 3–4 (1935), in
which he vehemently denounced liberalism and its version of democracy
for being ‘terribly separatist in everything. Religion is religion, morality is
morality, law is law, politics are politics, economy is economy, art is art,
society is society, the individual is the individual, and so forth’.
4. Miles (Giulio Bevilacqua), ‘Il metodo di Gesù’, Studium, 4 (1936).
5. See, for example, Enrico Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 4 (1936).
6. For France in the 1930s see, for example, W. Fortescue, The Third
Republic in France 1870–1940 (London and New York, 2000), 136ff;
and E. Weber, The Hollow Years. France in the 1930s (London, 1995).
7. Enrico Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 10 (1935).
8. Enrico Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 4 (1936).
9. Enrico Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 3 (1937).
10. Enrico Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 6 (1936).
11. Enrico Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 3 (1936).
12. For example, in September 1936 he spoke of Blum as ‘that Jew, socialist
and multimillionaire’. See his ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, in Studium, 9 (1936).
13. Ibid. On the Croix de Feu see, for example, R. Soucy, French Fascism: The
Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven and London, 1995), 104–203;
and K. Passmore, ‘Boy Scouting for Grown-Ups? Paramilitarism in the
Croix de Feu and the Parti Social Français’, in French Historical Studies,
19/2 (1995), 527–57.
14. For the politics of the main tendue, see, for example, the synthetic
account offered by René Rémond in his Les crises du catholicisme en
France dans les années trente (Paris, 1996), 204–12.
15. See, for example, e.r, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 6 (1937) and Enrico
Rosa, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 11–12 (1937).
16. For Italian Catholics and the FUCI’s attitude towards the Spanish Civil
War see, for example, A. Botti, ‘“Guerre di religioni” e “crociata” nella
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 171
36. Ibid.
37. L.V., ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 3 (1938).
38. For Pius XI’s Catholic Action and the changes it experienced during his
pontificate see, for example, Y. Chiron, Pie XI (1857–1939) (Paris, 2004),
196–215; G. Verucci, La Chiesa cattolica in Italia dall’Unità a oggi,
1861–1998 (Rome and Bari, 1999), 48–62; M. Casella, L’azione cattolica
nell’italia contemporanea (1919–1969) (Rome, 1992), 187–246; and
A. Acerbi, Chiesa Cultura Società. Momenti e figure dal Vaticano I a Paolo
VI (Milan, 1988), 150–54.
39. R. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities. Italy, 1922–1945 (Berkeley and
London, 2001), 2–3.
40. J. Pollard, Catholicism in Modern Italy. Religion, Society and Politics since
1861 (London and New York, 2008), 90.
41. On Sergio Paronetto see, for example, J. Dagnino, ‘Sergio Paronetto’ in
R.P. Domenico and M. Y. Hanley (eds.), Encyclopedia of Modern Christian
Politics, ii (Westport Conn., 2006), 430–31; M.L. Paronetto Valier,
Sergio Paronetto: Libertà d’iniziativa e giustizia sociale (Rome, 1991);
and A. Giovagnoli, Le Premesse della Ricostruzione. Tradizione e Modernità
nella Classe Dirigente Cattolica del Dopoguerra (Milan, 1982), 158–75.
42. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La professione da un punto di vista spirituale’,
Studium, 1 (1934).
43. Padre Mariano Cordovani O. P., ‘La prolusione di Padre Cordovani
all’Università di Firenze’, Studium, 3 (1933).
44. Igino Righetti, ‘Ragioni di un compito nuovo’, Studium, 1 (1934).
45. Ibid.
46. Sator, ‘Professione e perfezione’, Studium, 2 (1937).
47. The moral and religious aspects of the professions were insistently under-
lined. See, for example, Don Giuseppe de Luca, ‘Tendenze e problemi
della vita professionale in Italia. La letteratura’, Studium 3 (1934); Maria
Carena, ‘Tendenze e problemi della vita professionale in Italia.
L’insegnamento medio’, Studium, 4 (1934), and Avv. Giacomo
Pasquariello, ‘Tendenze e problemi della vita professionale in Italia. La
professione forense’, Studium,5 (1934).
48. J. Herf, Reactionary Modernism. Technology, Culture and Politics in
Weimar and the Third Reich, (Cambridge, 1984).
49. Ibid., 172–82.
50. F. Dessauer, Filosofia della tecnica (Brescia, 1934).
51. See, for example, his article ‘Tecnica ed etica’, Studium, 12 (1933).
52. A. Bernareggi, Professione cultura società, 41.
53. F. Dessauer, Filosofia della tecnica, 42–3; G. Colonetti, Dalla scuola alla
professione, (Milan, 1936), 100–1; and Raffaele Tovini, ‘Il valore spiri-
tuale della tecnica’, Azione fucina, 8 December 1935.
BUILDING THE NEW ORDER, 1933–39 173
54. G. Colonetti, Dalla scuola alla professione, 94. Also see M. Gentile,
Umanesimo e tecnica, (Milan, 1943), 80, and F. Dessauer, Filosofia della
tecnica, 40–1.
55. F. Dessauer, Filosofia della tecnica, 6.
56. Letter from Colonetti to Righetti, 3 April 1937 in Archivio del Movimento
Laureati, b.’1937 n.1’.
57. F. Dessauer, Filosofia della tecnica, 22.
58. G. Colonetti, Dalla scuola alla professione, 108–9.
59. Fausto Montanari, ‘Difesa della macchina’, Azione fucina, 19 February
1933.
60. M. Gentile, Umanesimo e tecnica, 55.
61. J. Herf, Reactionary Modernism, 152–188.
62. Carlo Nadali, ‘Doveri del tecnico di fronte alla società’, Azione fucina,
2 January 1938; A. Danusso, ‘La tecnica e lo spirito’, 198; G. Colonetti,
Dalla scuola alla professione, 123; idem, ‘L’importanza morale e sociale
del tecnico’, Azione fucina, 31 October 1937; Giuseppe Tedone,
‘Importanza morale e sociale dell’ingegnere e del tecnico’, Azione
fucina, 6 March 1938.
63. F. Dessauer, Filosofia della tecnica, 31.
64. Ibid., 49.
65. Francesco Costarelli, ‘Tecnica e invenzione’, Azione fucina, 23 May
1937.
66. S. Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880–1918 (Cambridge, Mass.
and London, 2003), 69.
67. For good studies dealing with cinema in Fascist Italy see, for example,
V. Zagarrio, Cinema e fascismo. Film, modelli, immaginari (Venice,
2004); G. P. Brunetta, Storia del cinema italiano. Il cinema del regime
1929–1945 (Rome, 2001); R. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities, 70–92;
J. Hay, Popular film culture in Fascist Italy: the passing of the Rex
(Bloomington, 1987); and M. Landy, Fascism in film: the Italian com-
mercial cinema, 1931–1943 (Princeton, 1986).
68. For Catholic attitudes to cinema see F. Casetti and E. Mosconi, ‘Il cinema
e I modelli di vita’ in L. Pazzaglia (ed.), Chiesa, cultura e educazione in
Italia tra le due guerre (Brescia, 2003), 147–68, and G. P. Brunetta,
Storia del cinema italiano, 52–75.
69. J. Pollard, Catholicism in Modern Italy, 95.
70. S. P, ‘Il cinematografo’, Azione fucina, 24 June 1934.
71. Gianfilippo Varvelli, ‘Interessarsi del cinema’, Azione fucina, 12 March
1933.
72. Filippo Piemontese, ‘Noi e il cinema’, Azione fucina, 9 April 1933.
73. Angelo Luciani, ‘Influenze del cinematografo’, Azione fucina, 15 March
1936.
174 J. DAGNINO
the Interior from 1961 to 1968, see his memoirs Paolo Emilio Taviani,
Politica a memoria d’uomo (Bologna, 2002). For his economic thought,
see S. Bartolozzi Batignani, Dai Progetti Cristiano-Sociali alla Costituente.
Il pensiero economico di Paolo Emilio Taviani (1932–1946) (Florence,
1985).
86. Paolo Emilio Taviani, ‘Che cosa è l’economia’, Azione fucina, 1
November 1936.
87. Bruno Dedè,’Corporativismo e tecnica’, Studium 5 (1934).
88. B. Mussolini, Opera Omnia, (Florence, 1964), vol. XXIV, 214–5 and
219, 23 April 1930.
89. Sergio Paronetto, ‘Problemi di economia corporativa. L’imprenditore in
regime corporativo’, Azione fucina, 22 March 1936.
90. See, for example, Vincenzo Caccia, ‘L’imprenditore nell’economia cor-
porativa’, Azione fucina, 23 August 1936 and idem, ‘Etica ed economia’,
Azione fucina, 19 April 1936.
91. Francesco Vito, ‘Il lavoro fatto economico’, Studium 10 (1936).
92. Enzo Pezzato, ‘I rapporti fra interesse individuale e interesse collettivo’,
Azione fucina, 23 August 1936. See also Carlo Zampetti, ‘Interesse indi-
viduale e interesse collettivo nell’ordinamento corporativo’, Azione
fucina, 30 August 1936.
93. Francesco Vito, ‘Il lavoro fatto economico’, Studium 10 (1936).
94. See, for example, Vincenzo Caccia, ‘L’imprenditore nell’economia cor-
porativa’, Azione fucina, 23 August 1936 and Mons. Adriano Bernareggi,
‘Il lavoro, patto umano’, Studium 3 (1936).
95. D. D. Roberts, The Syndicalist Tradition and Italian Fascism (Chapel
Hill, 1979), 242–74.
96. Franco Feroldi, ‘La soluzione dei conflitti di lavoro nell’ordinamento cor-
porativo’, Azione fucina, 15 August 1937.
97. See, for example, A. Brucculeri S. J., ‘Indirizzi corporativi ed Encicliche
Sociali’, Studium, 12 (1933) and idem, Intorno al corporativismo (Rome,
1934), 85–125, where Brucculeri tries to emphasise the difference
between the public character of Fascist corporations and the private
nature of the Catholic ones. On the Italian Jesuits’ view on corporativism
during the years under study see D. Veneruso, Il Seme della Pace. La cul-
tura cattolica e il nazionalimperialismo fra le due guerre (Rome, 1987),
187–96.
98. Lodovico Montini, ‘Corporazione e Politica’, Studium, 3–4 (1935). On
Lodovico Montini see, for example, Lodovico Montini al servizio della
Chiesa e dello Stato (Brescia, 2000), and Lodovico Montini 1896–1990
(Brescia, 1991).
99. Ibid.
176 J. DAGNINO
165. For this piece of legislation, see, for example, J. Charnitzky, ‘Carta della
scuola’ in V. De Grazia and S. Luzzatto (eds.), Dizionario del fascismo
I. A-K (Turin, 2005), 246–48; R. Gentili, Giuseppe Bottai e la riforma
fascista della scuola (Florence, 1979); and A. J. De Grand, Bottai e la
cultura fascista (Rome and Bari, 1978), 175–215.
166. See, for example, his letter to Righetti dated 19 October 1938 in Archivio
del Movimento Laureati, b.15
167. Augusto Baroni, ‘La Carta della Scuola’, Studium, 2 (1939). For the col-
laboration of family and school in the Carta’s projected totalitarian
school, see its VII Declaration in G. Bottai, La Carta Della Scuola (Milan,
1939), 77–8. Indeed the new type of school envisaged by the reform was
supposed to reflect the moral, political and economic unity of the nation
within the realm of the Fascist State. See ibid., 75.
168. Augusto Baroni, ‘Segnalazioni’, Studium, 5 (1939).
169. ‘Vittoria della pace’, Azione fucina, 23 October 1938
170. Baroni to Righetti, 1 October 1938, in Archivio del Movimento Laureati,
b.‘1938 n.1’. Pius XI, for his part, was very pessimistic about the Munich
Agreement. In his view it represented nothing more than the bankruptcy
of democracies. See P. Blet S. J., Pius XII and the Second World War
According to the Archives of the Vatican, (New Jersey, 1997), 8.
PART 3
The initial years of the Second World War are still a rather neglected topic
in the historiography of Italian Catholicism. Whereas the Resistance has
rightly received much scholarly attention, the previous period is often
regarded at best as a preparatory ground for future events, thus concen-
trating on the ‘after’ at the cost of overlooking the ‘during’ and too often
placing a somewhat undue stress on the anti-Fascist potentialities of the
Catholic world, as if this was the main preoccupation of the faithful of the
time.1 This somewhat teleological reasoning fails to consider the internal
dynamics of Catholic mentalities and values, and their frequent contradic-
tions and demands, in the deeply disturbing and changing reality of the
Second World War. Moreover, this perspective tends to neglect perhaps
the most crucial elements in the experience of many Catholics, namely,
the forceful effect that the war had on religious faith, with the pressures
it generated and the conflicts that arose between church, fatherland and
authority. In this respect, the FUCI offers an excellent basis for the analy-
sis of these and other issues. Designated as president of the association in
May 1939, Aldo Moro had to tackle a series of difficult problems from
the outset.2 Moro had been born on 23 September 1916, so he belonged
to that generation of the littorio that had almost entirely grown up in
the symbolic, political, and social universe of the Fascist regime. Perhaps
more important in his intellectual and religious itinerary was the fact that
he came from a family that had no strong ties to the traditions of social
A case in point was Spain. During the Spanish Civil War, despite three
requests, the dictator Francisco Franco was only able to grudgingly obtain
diplomatic recognition from the Vatican in 1938.9 The new pontiff, how-
ever, warmly endorsed the Nationalists’ definitive victory and ‘the very
noble Christian sentiments unreservedly expressed by the head of state and
so many of his faithful collaborators’.10 Another noteworthy example was
the Action Française movement, firmly condemned by Pius XI in 1926—a
censure lifted by Pius XII on 1 July 1939, much to the delight of tradi-
tionalist French Catholics, some of whom, boosted by this event, tried to
obtain a condemnation of the progressive Catholic newspaper L’Aube, on
the grounds that it was a violent enemy of Mussolini’s Italy and Franco’s
Spain and which, allegedly, supported revolutionary ideals in French poli-
tics.11 At the same time, there was a somewhat hesitant rapprochement
with the Italian government after the edgy turn that took place during
the last phase of the pontificate of Pope Pius XI. In his first encyclical,
Pius XII would claim with joy that Italy, after the ‘Providential signing of
the Lateran treaty’, enjoyed a ‘place of honour among the states’ and that
‘that event, worthy of imperishable record, has produced for Italy and for
Christendom at large a new and a fortunate situation, both in the tempo-
ral and in the spiritual order’.12
In 1939 the former Chamber of Deputies was abolished and replaced
with the new Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni, presented by Fascist
propaganda as the culmination and fulfilment of the corporative order
inaugurated by Mussolini. Some quarters of the federation welcomed this
innovation, viewing the Chamber of Deputies as a political anachronism
which, in their view, had done much harm in the recent history of the
peninsula, transforming itself into an expression of ‘partitocratical separa-
tion’ as a form of ‘anti-government’ responsible for the ‘degeneration’ of
the ‘representative monarchical’ system into a ‘parliamentarian’ type. In
contrast, present-day Italy could boast ‘the principle of authority restored,
the concept of opposition between people and state dissolved, the non-
existence of political parties but of a single one in power with the charac-
teristic institution of the prime minister that secures the concentration of
power and thus, its maximum efficiency’.13
Evidently, many factors such as the racist legislation of 1938, the grow-
ing collaborationism with Nazi Germany on the part of Mussolini and
some of his hierarchs, the fall of Catholic Poland at the hands of a per-
ceived pagan and anti-Christian state, and, more generally, their awareness
of the tragedies and suffering brought about by wars and especially the
186 J. DAGNINO
present conflict with its potential for total damage, all disturbed the uni-
versitari and forced them to engage in a profound self-searching exercise
to make sense of it all. This explains why, unlike the cases of the invasion
of Ethiopia in 1935 and the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War
found them more divided and cautious over the nature and significance of
the confrontation. A profound sense of duty to the authorities, a deeply-
embedded sentiment of the fatherland while rejecting exaggerated nation-
alism and hatred of the enemy, and a desire not to abandon the fucini
at the front while giving them the tools to develop a Christian experi-
ence of war were the main frameworks around which the FUCI lived the
war—elements, needless to say, that cannot be taken independently and as
having a fixed and static meaning in wartime. It is, on the contrary, their
reciprocal influence and tensions that make the religious experience of
Catholic students so dynamic and original.
These characteristics are to a greater or lesser degree present in the atti-
tude taken by the federation on Italy’s entry into the war in June 1940,
including a genuine degree of enthusiasm. Echoing Fascist war propa-
ganda, the FUCI stated on the front page of the 16 June issue of Azione
fucina that they were living ‘a decisive hour in the history of Italy. The
command is only one: win.’14 The students were to respond generously
to the call of the nation, living up to ‘the glorious traditions of the FUCI
that have given to the country, in every circumstance, disciplined and con-
scious citizens’.15 Warfare was also the occasion for sacrifice and a more
demanding spiritual life that reflected Christian heroism in a ‘generous
commitment’ and ‘forgetfulness of the self’. In sum, it was also the ‘time
of charity’.16
As was the case of many other European Catholics, from the begin-
ning of the war the FUCI energetically embarked upon the unveiling of
the causes of the conflict. More often than not, the students were not
interested in a search for roots entrenched in the logic of party politics or
foreign policy, but rather wished to decipher the foundations at a meta-
political and meta-ideological level. Above all they insisted that a ‘world
was dead’ and therefore that the expulsion of God from the interior life
of man and, thus, from private and social morals, was to blame. This mas-
sive metaphysical disorder could only be restored by returning to the sole
valid and undoubtedly integralist method: ‘that which unifies knowledge
in God as in God reality is united; that order that takes into account the
universal solidarity and hierarchy of beings; that, which due to an intrinsic
tendency that tends towards the construction a Summa Theologica’. For
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 187
many fucini the way was clear: there was a need for ‘a theocratic Christian
conception’.17
For some sectors of the clergy and laity the war was perceived, as had
been the case with the Great War, as a deserved punishment that came
directly from God for the sins of modern man.18 While the FUCI did
give some credit to this sort of explanation, it nevertheless translated it
in a different manner. Instead of the traditional apologetic model that
tended to view the world of the faithful as an amorphous, undifferenti-
ated, and passive entity, with the stress on the omnipotence of God with
little regard to the will and the self, the leaders of the organisation strove
to underpin the importance of the individual religious subject and the
need for a serious formation of his character and personality.19 As we
have already seen, it is precisely from this approach that the most fruitful
achievements of the federation in the religious realm had been and will
be derived. Additionally, the dialectics of the punishment of the creator
were firmly rooted in an evangelical optimism for the students. In the end,
‘hate will be defeated through a general offensive of love’, as Paolo Blasi
self-assuredly affirmed.20
its destiny—a vocation that would come to fruition when the kingdom
was solidly embedded in the spirit of Christianity. The nineteenth-century
poet Alessandro Manzoni was often praised as the nation’s poet, to whom
only Dante was a paragon,23 as were the efforts of the association to
portray itself as the legitimate heir of nineteenth-century social and lib-
eral Catholicism which they proposed as ‘optimistic’, in contrast to the
‘reactionary’ or ‘pessimistic’ thinkers such as the Spaniard Juan Donoso
Cortés.24
Characteristic of the FUCI’s patriotic spirit was the emphasis it placed
on the particular qualities of the Italian people. They were depicted as
having the virtue of clarity and luminosity of thought, often using com-
monplaces such as that Italy was ‘the land of the sun’.25 The Italians were
not the victims of passions that obscured reason, but a nation where com-
mon sense was the rule, the latter a virtue that did not undermine their
powerful imagination and ideals. They were further applauded for their
high moral standards and their sense of balance. Once again Manzoni was
enshrined in this respect as the ‘poet of justice’.26
The war saw the erosion of the ideal-type of the Catholic-National
state. While this is undoubtedly true, however, we have to consider the
persistence of this myth during the first years of war, as well as the sub-
stantial Catholic engagement in the war effort. In a sense, it was not war as
such that dictated the death of the ideal, but rather defeat. Furthermore,
in many strata of the Catholic population, the myth conserved its abil-
ity to mobilise people until the end of 1941 or even the first months of
1942. More precisely, at this stage the accommodation with the Fascist
structures entered into a final crisis, the ideal persisting under different
and more moderate forms in Christian Democrat Italy.27 A vibrant patrio-
tism was at the very heart of the FUCI mentality since its origins, and as
the official hymn of the association proclaimed, ‘Always, if Italy invites,
we are ready to give our lives’ (Sempre se l’Italia invita, siam pronti a
dar la vita).28 The idea of a specific sense of nationalism—where there
was no contradiction between religious faith and patriotic sentiment—
was the principal element in the federation’s civic discourse.29 At their
official gatherings, the FUCI groups appropriately rendered homage to
the heroic soldier who had fallen in the conflict, visiting memorials and
cemeteries, thus strengthening their national imagery. The regime itself
had made a great effort at incorporating the nationalist discourse under
the Fascist banner, thus equating nationalism with Fascism, subsuming the
celebration of the war’s fallen with the cult of the ‘martyrs’ of the Fascist
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 189
‘revolution’.30 Fascists could only be delighted at the news that the FUCI,
after its congresses, usually visited these sites commemorating the memory
of the fallen.31
At the heart of FUCI’s definition of patriotism was the presumption
of a morally superior people, the ‘healthy religious sentiment’ innate to
the population that, along with ‘the active vigilance of the public author-
ity’, had preserved unaltered the ‘moral integrity of Italy’ from foreign
and malicious theories and practices.32 Italy was further presented as the
people of ‘hidden and heroic virtues’.33 Geography and history also played
a prominent role in bequeathing the nation with a spiritual, moral, and
cultural primacy. Geography was duly imbued with an aesthetic symbolism
of primacy, elevating it to a character of providential mission, thus sacralis-
ing and incorporating in a metaphysical sphere the order of nature. Italy
was a ‘bridge of passage between continents … capital of civilisation and
fulcrum of vital trajectories’.34 The perception of being at a turning point
of history was deeply diffused in the minds of many Catholics. Out of the
war there would emerge a new order in which Catholic Italy would play a
pivotal and palingenetic role, religion being at the centre of the moderni-
sation of the peninsula. Franco Castellani, like so many young people of
the time, had been a member of Catholic Youth, the GUF, and the FUCI,
none of which appears to have raised questions of incompatibility or con-
tradictions in his conscience. He enthusiastically enrolled in the war effort
and died on the Albanian front. In his mind, there was no doubt about
the mission of the conflict: ‘believers in a religious civilisation, we feel the
necessity that our religion serve as the basis for our new and very modern
civilisation, where the Fatherland and the family, the nation and the race,
culture and art find their proper place’. It was a conflict that in the end
would express the ‘profundity, nobility and loftiness of the new man’.35
For Augusto Baroni too it was self-evident that the fucini had to under-
stand and live the ‘fatality’ of Italy: ‘In the current history of Europe and
the world, Italy cannot have a second-rate role.’ Thus, the duty was clear:
‘obey, work and fight for the Fatherland until victory’.36 The FUCI never-
theless tried to avoid a crude jingoism. Thus, for example, the federation
refused to join in a campaign of demonising or rallying behind the hatred
of Allied soldiers. This attitude emerged not solely from the universal duty
of charity for Catholics but was also a manifestation of the distance and,
in some, repugnance they adopted towards the Fascist view of regenera-
tive violence and its instinctual rhetoric of ‘revolutionary war’. It was also,
190 J. DAGNINO
along with us … God reveals himself in my life to all and to me in the life
of all.’49 Moro therefore insisted that ‘Christianity is not an abstract and
static form that imposes itself on a man’s personality to the point of suf-
focating it.’ Religion was at its best when it embraced and responded to
the inner and most intimate needs of men. Christianity was thus equated
to humanity, transcendence being fulfilled in the ‘interior’ man: ‘The
values of Christianity are the values of humanity: Christian goodness is
human goodness. Our humanity talks through our Christianity.’ Above all
Moro urged an existential form of religiosity: ‘We must realise a human
Christianity, that is, to feel in their integrity the values of our life’, under-
pinning the primacy of the self from which emerges the expression of
‘friendship, family, State and Church’.50
Emilio Guano also expressed the need for the Christian message to
be rendered understandable and loveable for modern man. A delicate
religious-cultural operation was needed to avoid the perceived unremit-
ting distance between the Christian credo and contemporary civilisation:
‘One could say that the highest doctrines of the Church sound to many to
be empty words, deprived of any content; or, commendable doctrines, but
too lofty, without relevance for the everyday human existence, a language
that is not understood and thus, does not touch, does not engage.’51 The
Genovese priest offered a highly original and personal contribution to
the ethical-religious reflections of wartime FUCI, namely a Christianity
embedded in a cultural-theological perspective of the Christian engage-
ment in history. A confident attitude to history was needed, avoiding regi-
mented attitudes of utter mistrust to its dynamics. Christianity in history
had a pre-eminent role of creating balance: ‘Christian life and thought are
contributors of a sense of balance. Christianity invites us to look reality in
the face and to live in the present without pretexts of evasion, that would
betray our duties as citizens, men, in sum, a betrayal of our divine voca-
tion.’52 Thus, Guano encouraged an immersion in history and not an eva-
sion of reality that could be found in some forms of religious pietism of the
times. At the same time, however, this line did espouse the need for a dis-
tancing from daily vicissitudes. The FUCI thus aimed at ascertaining the
individual specificities of modern times. At its heart was the perceived rush
of modern man to action and the conviction that knowledge in contempo-
rary Europe largely made sense if it was practical, operative—vital, in sum.
Explaining this peculiarity of the age, Aldo Moro affirmed: ‘Among the
most characteristic aspects of the modern soul there is an anxious pursuit
of life, of the entirety of life that wants to be possessed instantaneously in
194 J. DAGNINO
that which seems to express it best in its integral dynamism, that is, action;
that is why there is in modern life a desire for action.’53 Nevertheless,
the fetishism of action for action sake’s was, in FUCI branches, if not
wholly contradicted, then severely checked. Action, to be fruitful, had
to be imbued with the clarity of ideals and meditations. In this respect,
there was no indulging in the glorification of mere voluntarism or the
irrationalism that championed the supposed arcane powers of instincts:
‘The mistake of our age lies in glorifying instincts without elevating and
purifying them. Our task in the face of our age is to bring religion to sur-
prise instincts and in so doing, embody them.’54 This stance constituted a
notable divergence from Fascism’s ideology of the uomo nuovo,55 although
it would be a mistake to invest this difference with a strongly political
meaning. Indeed, it was perhaps, more precisely and more consciously, a
rebuke to the militant and pervasive organisational culture that was to be
found in so many of the lay associations in Catholic Action, based on a
recognition that those models of active and self-conscious apostolate were
becoming dated.
This rescue of the individual religious subject was accompanied by a
rediscovery of the values of interiority and intimacy. This meant a greater
attention to the construction of personality. Special attention was lavished
on the formation of the character, virility, serenity, and spirit of sacrifice so
inherent in every individual. The vice ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI,
Franco Costa, repeatedly warned against what he thought to be one of
the main deficiencies of modern life: ‘the absence of interiority, the inca-
pacity to achieve a freed and intelligent operation of the spirit … From
this premise derives the lack of personality and the fracture between tech-
nological progress and the path of civilisation, in which we find, under
an apparently exalted life, an impoverished humanity.’56 The fucini were,
hence, ‘believers in the values of life, in the freedom through which the
personality is affirmed, in the intelligence that seeks and conquers, in the
will that edifies and in the joy of love’.57
These values were transferred to military life, albeit recognising its sin-
gular features. Above all, war represented a radical inversion and destabi-
lisation of the ‘normal’ state of affairs. During wartime ‘the characteristic
themes of life assume … a vastness of proportions, a violence and urgency
that render them particularly impressive … it calls for the most elementary
and essential aspects of life with the new force it gives to the most common
facts, such as death and suffering’.58 As such, the conflict offered a crucial
test for the personality of young men and their vitality. A prominent role
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 195
in military life was given to the virtue of discipline for being an agent
in the formation of a manly character.59 Discipline not only influenced
the ‘exterior aspect and the formal conduct of the soldier’ but also the
‘soul, the way of feeling and thinking’ from which derived spontaneously
a ‘greater control of the will and nerves’.60 The ideal of manliness was
put to test by the war, an archetype that was physical, aesthetic, moral,
and religious. It involved physical strength, courage, purity of the soul,
and an alert and transparent religious consciousness. The fucino soldier
had to be generous, self-assured, controlled, and sober with his emotions
placed always at the service of reason and faith. Above all he represented
the ideal type of the faithful who conceived of life essentially as a dona-
tion. Sergio Pignedoli, one of the military chaplains of the students, was
adamant about this aspect: ‘you no longer belong to yourself: this is the
substance. You belong now to the Fatherland, to society, to human fra-
ternity … you belong to history.’61 Indeed, Pignedoli went on to idealise
the Italian Catholic soldier as the most loyal, devoted, and generous: ‘This
simple soldier, son of the people can see in sacrifice a necessary means of
life and redemption … In the fight for the Fatherland he sees his duty and
the promise of spiritual greatness and future justice.’62 The Catholic sol-
diers were also presented as being in the front line of military bravery and
commitment: ‘they are in their hundreds. By their own initiative they have
looked for the first lines in the battlefield and the most dangerous ones.
They have wished and waited to offer themselves. They have prepared for
this offer always keeping united to Christ and his Grace so that their offer
could be a Holy Mass.’63 The image of the soldier as joyfully embracing
his personal cross as a path of personal redemption was widely diffused in
some sectors of the association. Giorgio Bachelet, a fucino writing from
the Russian front, confirmed this deeply felt belief. Although acknowledg-
ing the tremendous constraints imposed by the Russian geography he,
nevertheless, could proudly affirm that ‘few soldiers have the resistance
and patience of the Italians in war’.64
The war experience can be better understood through the new models
of sanctity developed in interwar Italy which, instead of proposing models
centred on contemplative and ascetic figures, tended to emphasise the
life experiences of people devoted to struggle and action. Additionally, a
new vigour was bestowed on youth as symbolising virility, heroism and
patriotism.65 A most congenial source of inspiration in this realm was con-
stituted by the young Catholic men who had fallen during the Great War.
One of the most influential examples of this new brand of spirituality was,
196 J. DAGNINO
that only a serene conscience can possess’.70 Another victim of the conflict,
Francesco Pio Pomini was similarly presented to the collective memory
of the students as a role model of operative innocence, his life a lesson
of the translucent vision of the divine order. He was represented in ‘his
crystal clear intimacy, in which the pure voice of the heart made its way
promptly and even impetuously’. Pomini had been in his life, the propa-
gandist hastened to add, a ‘convinced supporter of Fascism’.71 The already
mentioned Franco Castellani, a member of the Fascist University Groups
as well as the Gioventù Cattolica and of the Milanese FUCI, was described
as in possession of a ‘decided physiognomy’.72 Once again we encounter
the glorification of the young body as the most untainted agent of sacral
renewal: ‘he exhibited so clearly the signs of Grace, that one could see
in his forehead the vestiges of the cross impressed by the bishop for the
sacrament of Confirmation’. We learn that he had been a ‘slender and tall’
youth with a ‘long face’ and a ‘lean and free forehead’, deprived of any
element of callousness. His mouth seemed to be permanently ‘open to
smile, ready and open to the seemingly implausible’. Essentially, his body
seemed naturally constituted to ‘spring to the altitudes’73 and his heart
was ‘as wide as the cathedrals’.74 Further ahead, we are told by the mili-
tary chaplain of the organisation that Castellani was ‘a convinced Fascist’
attracted to the movement’s aspiration for the ‘participation of the inte-
gral man in social life’ and ‘selfless love for the Fatherland’.75 In 1941,
the Catholic soldier still maintained the virtue of the Italian war against
the ‘democratic world’ that had been created by three centuries of ‘ratio-
nalism, positivism and atheism’.76 Castellani was convinced that he was
fighting ‘for the freedom of the people from the slavery of a few, from
materialism, Judaism and Communism’.77 Castellani was certainly among
the most radicalised Catholic patriots, but his example does display the
pervasiveness and strength of the myth of redemptive war blended with a
heroic vision of Christianity. The fallen fucini were a living example of the
resistance of transcendence against the corruption of matter. As Franco
Costa eloquently commented, ‘every fallen person is alive, present, albeit
invisible’.78
However, the notion of a Catholic manliness differed in substantial
ways from Fascism’s intended anthropological revolution. If the model
of the Catholic man derived its inspiration from the redemptive death of
a God-man—focusing on manly types such as the apostle, the purity of
heart and intention, the selfless husband and father, as well as the loyal
and disciplined citizen—the Fascist ‘New Man’ had been born from the
198 J. DAGNINO
Conclusion
As the war progressed, the myth of Catholic Italy started to wane. After
the defeat in Greece, Italy lost Eritrea, Somalia, and Ethiopia in the spring
of 1941. The East African empire was no more. By May 1943 the entire
Axis army in North Africa had surrendered. Additionally, Mussolini had
insisted on sending troops to the Eastern Front. By 1942 there were
around 227,000 Italian troops in the east, poorly equipped and with
an ever-weaker morale.88 The impact of the disastrous military defeats
accompanied by the enormous privations imposed on the civilian popula-
tion, and the collapse of the home front together with the prospects of
foreign occupation, all made the possibility of a new order in which Italy
would play a pivotal role seem rather aloof from reality, thus losing much
of its initial power of engagement.89 The bombing of Italian cities was
an especially disturbing and traumatic experience for the everyday life of
the population, an experience of a burgeoning sense of fear and isolation.
It contributed to a sense of despair and hopelessness and to a profound
inversion and dislocation of the ‘normal’ patterns of life.90 Franco Costa,
writing to Giulio Andreotti in November 1942, commented on how his
office had been affected by the bombings, and how he had miraculously
escaped alive and unharmed, but that nevertheless ‘unfortunately the
conditions in Genoa are extremely painful’.91 In Milan, the regent of the
local chapter of the FUCI, Nello Annoni, perished when his house was
bombed to the ground.92 All these developments led, progressively, to a
radical re-questioning of the principal issues raised by warfare. Andreotti
now lambasted some of the central tenets of Fascist war propaganda,
namely the supposed anti-bourgeois war led by ‘proletarian’ Italy against
the ‘plutocratic’ nations. He vigorously called on Italians to ‘desist
from the ultra-rhetorical anti-bourgeois struggle, that, for lack of preci-
sion of the object to be combated, recalls to the mind the epic struggle
against the windmills’.93 It was, perhaps, Paolo Blasi who best expressed
this generalised state of mind. Writing to Andreotti in May 1943 from
Slovenia, he conveyed his repugnance and despair at the behaviour he
had seen among the military chaplains.94 He commented critically on a
mass he had attended on 16 May 1943 at which the priest had profusely
engaged in all the ‘commonplaces, used and abused nauseatingly’ with
200 J. DAGNINO
‘words on the Fatherland, politics and war. He speaks of the Italy of the
thousand peoples, of the “evil of Africa” of the “Anglo-Saxon pirates” of
“hatred to the enemy”, of the “God of the armies”.’95 In Blasi’s mind it
was not principally the content of such preaching that disturbed him, but
rather that these things, repeated so frequently, ‘have found an echo and
significance so different from when they were said for the first time’.96
There was no doubt in Blasi’s opinion that the clergy was exploiting the
Catholic faith: ‘he—the priest—names Christ but twice and he seems to
be afraid of pronouncing his name and, when he does, he rushes to unite
it to that of the Fatherland’.97 Furthermore, the fucino soldier affirmed
that among the military chaplains it is said that ‘the youth of Catholic
Action are the most dangerous for the nation’.98
During the conflict, the association never espoused central elements
of Fascist war propaganda—namely the cult of regenerative violence, the
preaching of hatred of the enemy—and had refused, as we have seen, to
adopt such facets as the glorification of instincts, crude belligerency, and,
more generally, the mysticisms of revolutionary war. Furthermore, the eager
interest through which the FUCI aimed at keeping in contact with its mem-
bers at the front, intent on maintaining a specific religious discourse adapted
to warfare, caused significant suspicions among the Fascist authorities. A
major concern was the possibility that the FUCI was doing works of pros-
elytism among the troops. But above all there emerges a sense of impotence
among Fascist authorities to classify the fucini: they were not anti-Fascists in
the obvious political sense, nor could they be accused of defeatism or of not
showing a sense of duty and passion for the fatherland. Yet they were not eas-
ily categorised in the current forms of social behaviour. Writing in December
1942 the prefect of Padua eloquently commented upon this perplexity:
They are all anti-Fascists. They reveal an enormous love for the Fatherland and
many of them have already offered their lives in this war, but they have their
own mentality; they proclaim themselves to be lovers of the Fatherland and
the king and willing to make the supreme sacrifice, but they are not Fascists.99
Notes
1. See the fine methodological observations by F. Traniello, ‘Il mondo cat-
tolico nella seconda guerra mondiale’ in idem, Città dell’ uomo. Cattolici,
partito e Stato nella storia d’Italia (Bologna, 1999), 217–78.
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 201
For Giovanni Papini, perhaps the most publicised convert of interwar Italy,
the war also represented a process of spiritual cure and Fascism embodied
its ideal agent. The conflict was essential to the European destiny of the
nation. Indeed Italy was responsible for the ideal unity of the continent
and thus justified the country’s imperial vocation. See his very eloquent
Italia mia (Florence, 1941).
36. Augusto Baroni, ‘Considerazioni attuali’, Azione fucina, 20 October
1940. The distinguished philosopher Carlo Mazzantini, in the official pub-
lication of the activities of the organisation for the a cademic year 1940–41,
gave, perhaps, the most eloquent representation of the myth of Catholic
Italy: ‘Today, the Fatherland, completely fused in a thought and a will
around the national goals, engages in a titanic fight to affirm itself accord-
ing to its rights, as one of the very first people of the earth, embedded in
its racial origins and national traditions…’ See C. Mazzantini, ‘la filosofia
nella vita e nella cultura umana’ in Le attività delle associazioni universita-
rie di A.C.I. Anno accademico 1940–1941-XIX (Rome, 1941), 47–48.
37. See, for example, Sergio Pignedoli ‘Ai militari’ Azione fucina, 15 January
1941.
38. The Vatican had demanded that the sacred character of the city be incor-
porated in the Lateran treaties, a feature that did not suit the government
but nevertheless, was finally included. This vicissitude well illustrates the
potential conflicts in the diverse symbolic visions of Rome. See A. Riccardi,
Roma ’città sacra’?Dalla conciliazione all’operazione Sturzo (Milan, 1979),
1–58.
39. See, for example, R. Visser, ‘Fascist Doctrine and the Cult of the Romanità’,
Journal of Contemporary History, 27/1 (January 1992), 5–22; E. Gentile,
Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica nell’Italia fascista,
129–137; I. Insolera, Roma fascista (Rome, 2001); B. Painter, Mussolini’s
Rome. The Fascist transformation of the eternal city (New York, 2004);
A. Thomas Wilkins, ‘Augustus, Mussolini, and the parallel imagery of
Empire’ in C. Lazzaro and R.J. Crum (eds.), Donatello among the
Blackshirts. History and modernity in the visual culture of Fascist Italy
(Ithaca, 2005), 53–65.
40. Mario Cordovani, ‘Romanita della Chiesa’ in Il Ragguaglio dell’attivita
culturale, letteraria ed artistica dei cattolici in Italia 1942 XX (Milan,
1942), 255.
41. G. B., ‘patria del tempo, patria dell’eternità’, Azione fucina, 31 January
1941.
42. Raimondo Manzini, ‘Missione d’Italia’, Azione fucina, 17 November
1940. Along similar lines an anonymous soldier exclaimed from the front:
‘The soldier does not and cannot separate, in his love that inspires courage
and generous devotion, the terrestrial and the celestial fatherland. He lives
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 205
and works, fights and suffers … for the altars and the home.’ The letter is
in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Segretaria militare, 1937–43’.
43. C. Lopez, ‘La situazione della chiesa in Spagna’, Azione fucina, 15 January
1941. The article continued by praising that ‘rarely, in the history of the
relations between Church and State has a State given a profession of faith
the fact that in God, Jesus Christ and in the Church so explicit and frank,
in which all the rights of the juridical personality of the Church are recog-
nised as the one made by the Spanish Head of State’.
44. ‘Vita della Chiesa. Vita e cultura religiosa nella Spagna’, Azione fucina, 23
May 1941.
45. Giovacchino Carreira, ‘Attuale situazione della Chiesa nel Portogallo’,
Azione fucina, 10 November 1941. This ideal of a national and palinge-
netic Catholicism was even extended to the anti-Semitic Slovak govern-
ment led by Mgr. Tiso. See, for example, ‘Attuale situazione della Chiesa
Cattolica nella Repubblica Slovacca’, Azione fucina, 20 August 1941.
46. Emilio Guano, La Chiesa (appunti di lezioni) (Rome, 1936).
47. Ibid., 24–25.
48. Ibid., 138.
49. Ibid.
50. Ibid.
51. Emilio Guano, ‘Parole umane’, Azione fucina, 24 January 1941.
52. Emilio Guano, ‘Constatazioni e problemi nel tempo presente’, Studium,
10 (1940).
53. Aldo Moro, ‘Sensibilità’, Azione fucina, 31 January 1941.
54. Primo Mazzolari, ‘Tentazioni del nostro tempo’, Azione fucina, 1 March
1941.
55. For this central component in Fascism’s totalitarian ideology see
M.-A. Matard-Bonucci and P. Milza (eds.), L’Homme nouveau dans
l’Europe fasciste (1922–1945). Entre dictature et totalitarisme (Paris, 2004);
E. Gentile, Fascismo. Storia e interpretazione (Rome and Bari, 2002),
235–65; and G.L. Mosse, The image of man. The creation of modern mas-
culinity (New York, 1998), 155–81.
56. Franco Costa, ‘Vacanze 1940’, Azione fucina, 17 July 1940. For the role
of Don Costa in this respect, see the fine work by R. Moro, ‘Franco Costa
vice-assistente della FUCI (1933–1955)’ in Don Franco Costa. Per la storia
di un sacerdote attivo nel laicato cattolico italiano, 149–290.
57. Franco Costa, ‘Carità nella vita universitaria’, Azione fucina, 27 October
1940.
58. Emilio Guano, ‘Doveri dell’ ora’, Azione fucina, 10 November 1940.
59. Manliness and individual regeneration had been a prominent feature of the
myth of the First World War. See, for example, E. Gentile, L’apocalisse della
modernità. La Grande Guerra per l’uomo nuovo (Milan, 2008); G. L.
206 J. DAGNINO
Mosse, Fallen soldiers. Reshaping the memory of the world wars (New York,
1991). For the Italian case, the fundamental study is M. Isnenghi, Il mito
della grande Guerra (Bologna, 2004). Also very useful is R. Wohl, The
Generation of 1914 (Cambridge, Mass., 1979), 160–202.
60. This is a speech given by E. Ceccherini at Assisi in 1942. The manuscript is
in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Segretaria militare 1937–43’.
61. Sergio Pignedoli, ‘Ai militari’, Azione fucina, 30 July 1941.
62. Sergio Pignedoli, ‘Ai militari’, Azione fucina, 15 January 1941.
63. Sergio Pignedoli, ‘Motivi di una grande fiducia’ Azione fucina, 10 October
1941.
64. Giorgio Bachelet, ‘Guerra all’Est. Corrispondenza dal Fronte Russo’,
Azione fucina, 18 January 1942.
65. R. Moro, ‘La religione e la “nuova epoca”. Cattolicesimo e modernità tra
le due guerre mondiali’, 563–68.
66. Among the myriad of publications devoted to Borsi, see, for example:
A. Cojazzi, Giosuè Borsi (Turin, 1916); G. Berzero, Vita di Giosuè Borsi
(Milan, 1933); N. Badano, Giosuè Borsi (Rome, 1935); and G. Cantini,
Giosuè Borsi (Turin, 1938).
67. See, for example, Giosuè Borsi, ‘Lettera dal fronte’, Azione fucina, 17 July
1940 and idem, ‘Lettera dal fronte’, Azione fucina, 11 August 1940. The
Ecclesiastical Assistant Franco Costa, in a letter to Aldo Moro of 1940 had
encouraged the publication of extracts of the correspondence of Borsi as
well as of other ‘Christian combatants’. The letter is in Archivio della
Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Assistenti Ecclesiastici 1925–1940’.
68. Giosuè Borsi, ‘Lettera dal fronte’, Azione fucina, 11 August 1940.
69. Sergio Pignedoli, ‘Ai militari’, Azione fucina, 14 March 1941.
70. ‘Compagni caduti’, Azione fucina, 11 April 1941.
71. Giovanni Ambrosetti, ‘Compagni caduti. Francesco Pio Pomini’, Azione
fucina, 16 May 1941.
72. S. Pignedoli, Franco Castellani, 5.
73. Ibid., 9–13.
74. Ibid., 52
75. Ibid., 81.
76. Ibid., 154.
77. Ibid., 91.
78. Franco Costa, ‘Compagni caduti’, Azione fucina, 10 August 1941.
79. For a comparative analysis of the different anthropological visions, albeit
limited to the 1930s and not including the FUCI, see the fine work by
A. Ponzio, ‘Corpo e anima: sport e modello virile nella formazione dei
giovani fascisti e dei giovani cattolici nell’Italia degli anni trenta’ in Mondo
contemporaneo, 1/3 (2005), 51–104.
80. G. L. Mosse, The image of man. The creation of modern masculinity, 176.
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 207
Richard J. Wolff has asserted that from approximately June/July 1943 the
FUCI was embarked on an ‘open and undisguised … propaganda for a
post-war Christian Democratic state’.1 However, this vision of the Catholic
students association firmly united behind a sole political project and party
is far removed from the historical truth. Above all, with Mussolini’s evic-
tion from office on 25 July 1943, the vast majority of the fucini were con-
cerned with other issues than the formation of a political party, principally
the future of Italy as a nation state and the enormous task of rebuilding
the country after a devastating war. The bulk of the Catholic intellectuals
insisted that the desire—evident among many of the former popolari—to
return to the liberal regime that had prevailed on the peninsula before the
rise to power of the Fascists had to be rejected as an unrealistic possibility.
The nation had to fight the temptation of considering the generation that
had grown under the sign of the littorio as ‘a nonentity, dried up by the
education received by the past regime’, adding that no one could doubt
that ‘even the fascio had known how to obtain some good results in some
areas’.2 Indeed, this was evidence of the profound fracture caused by the
Fascist regime during its 20 years of government in the Catholic world,
where the new generation had little or no contact with, or knowledge of,
the generation of Luigi Sturzo and Alcide De Gasperi.
Relations between the two generations were not devoid of conflicts,
precisely because of their different historical, cultural, and social traditions.
De Gasperi, for example, spoke harshly about the generation that had been
educated under Fascism. Writing to a leading member of the Movimento
Laureati on 10 September 1943, Sergio Paronetto, the future Christian
Democrat premier declared that ‘unfortunately I am persuaded more and
more that Fascism is a congenital mentality of the younger generation’.3
For their part, the young Catholic intellectuals felt that they could not
find in the former popolari adequate intellectual partners for their mis-
sion of rebuilding the nation. Then national president of the FUCI,
Giulio Andreotti, who would nevertheless join the ranks of the Christian
Democrats in mid-1944, had criticised a year earlier the older cohort for
wanting to erase the Fascist totalitarian past with a ‘sponge stroke’ and for
considering the Italian defunct regime as ‘an incidental parenthesis in the
historical process of our country’. He accused them of wanting a mere
re-establishment of the political system that had existed in the country
prior to the March of Rome, neglecting what Andreotti considered to be
the fundamental task of undertaking a reasoned and balanced assessment
and a revision of the political system that would take into account both
the old order and the totalitarian experience.4 Striking a similar chord,
fucina Bianca Pignoni complained how in present-day Italy youth was
forgotten and marginalised from the most pressing issues of the day, while
the men—who in her mind belonged to another era—lived ‘feverishly for
political action, superficial spectators who have lost the capacity for any
understanding of spiritual forces’.5
While some leaders of the emerging Christian Democrat Party, such
as Giuseppe Spataro, reached out actively to the fucini to collaborate in
their new political enterprise,6 many in the federation did not immediately
respond warmly to this invitation. Giulio Andreotti had to acknowledge
in a letter to Adriano Ossicini that ‘I have received from the leaders of the
ex-Popular Party the printed text of which I send you a copy … I would
appreciate if together we could take a look at this policy document, which
in my opinion will not be received enthusiastically by young people.’7
It is true that Giulio Andreotti presented his resignation as national
president of the FUCI at the end of June 1944 to enter the ranks of
the Christian Democrats.8 The former central ecclesiastical assistant of the
FUCI in the 1925–33 period, Giovanni Battista Montini, who champi-
oned the cause of the political unity of the Catholic world, was quick
to react to Andreotti’s choice and congratulated him in the sense ‘that
a decision like yours … cannot find obstacles from those who like your-
self, like all the friends of the Good, want to serve as best as possible the
THE FUCI 1943–45: THE PATH TO POST-FASCISM 211
good cause’.9 Nevertheless, this sense of high moral ground that Montini
accorded the Christian Democrat party was not shared by large num-
bers of Catholic intellectuals. Giulio Andreotti, in a letter to Alcide De
Gasperi, had to recognise that between Catholic Action and the Christian
Democrats there ‘did not reign that harmony that should be by now natu-
ral, spontaneous, wholehearted’ and offered himself as mediator between
the competing elements to resolve the difficult situation.10
There were some fucini who went even further in seeking to rescue
some of the principles that Fascism had allegedly stood for. This was the
case, for example, of Antonio Olivi who, after the fall of Mussolini at the
end of July 1943, acknowledged some of the achievements of the defunct
regime. Among them, he recalled how the Italian experiment had suppos-
edly challenged the rise of atheistic communism, and how it had, in prin-
ciple at least, championed the moral principles of Catholicism, especially
through the signing of the Lateran Pacts in February 1929. Olivi con-
cluded defiantly, stating that in his view, those Catholics who had accepted
communist or liberal ideas were far more in conflict with the teachings of
the church than those who had collaborated with Mussolini’s regime.11
In the face of the mounting pressures that came from the Christian
Democrats to persuade the members of the FUCI to enter into their
ranks, it was probably the ecclesiastical assistant Emilio Guano who most
forcefully and vehemently defended the independence and the freedom
of action of the fucini in the political realm. Guano, unlike Andreotti
and Montini, saw a virtue in the plurality of political options offered to
the Catholic students, as long as these political parties did not contradict
the principal tenets of the Catholic Church. He insisted that the FUCI’s
main task should remain one of cultural and religious formation, and that
in order to fulfil its goals the federation should remain aloof from party
politics, adding that no leader of the FUCI could simultaneously belong
to a political association.12 And, against the growing pressures that came
from Alcide De Gasperi, Guano resolutely responded that he refused to
accept that ‘Christian Democracy should be the only and necessary outlet
to which a Catholic university student should turn his political activity.’13
Going further, the Genoese ecclesiastical assistant firmly repeated to De
Gasperi ‘that Catholic Action preserves the firmest autonomy and dis-
tinction in the face of any political party … essentially because a party is
always just a concrete party of programme and action in which the doc-
trine and discipline of the church are not necessarily represented’.14 Guano
finally concluded his missive to De Gasperi by confessing that he was not
212 J. DAGNINO
persuaded that the opportunity existed ‘to cement the forces that inspire
themselves in Christianity in a sole political party, not even under the pres-
ent circumstances’.15 What Guano wanted to avoid—and in this sense he
would be proven right by the history of post-1945 Italy—was to avert the
‘danger that a certain party came about to be seen as the political organ
through which the church operates secretly’.16
Moreover, contrary to the widespread assumption that the fucini
immediately joined the ranks of the Christian Democrats after the fall of
Mussolini in July 1943, many of its most distinguished members joined
other political forces. Some of them, like Giorgio Bo and Paolo Emilio
Taviani,17 initially joined the Social Christians led by Gerardo Bruni, while
others became members of the Catholic Communists. Among the lat-
ter, one can mention Giorgio Bachelet, Giuseppe Mira, Sergio Paronetto,
Luigi Pediconi, Pasquale Saraceno, and Gino Barbieri.18
Another issue that greatly troubled Catholic intellectuals in the
1943–45 period was the perceived crisis of the sense of nationhood after
the armistice of 8 September 1943. This was a preoccupation that went
far beyond the fact of military defeat. The crisis of the idea of the nation
was perceived to go to the heart of the most intimate moral and spiritual
foundations of the civic community. In face of the reality of a country
split in two and fought over by mutually-hostile foreign powers during
the 1943–45 period, Guano commented how this tragic situation had
been faced by the Italian populace which possessed extremely weak spiri-
tual resources, in response, he called with a sense of urgency to ‘renew in
ourselves the moral sense … we need to re-educate ourselves with a sense
of dignity … and interior liberty’.19 Likewise, for Ivo Murgia, the Italians
of the time were a self-defeated people, with little to no moral, social, or
civic awareness of the chaos that the country was undergoing. In Murgia’s
view, the Italian of his day was ‘a tired man, sceptical, disoriented and exas-
perated’.20 In a similar vein, Giulio Andreotti, representing the thoughts
and feelings of many fucini, proclaimed that the armistice of 8 September
1943, beyond the military and political failure that it represented, also
marked a ‘moral and spiritual’ collapse of the nation.21
However, it was probably Salvatore Satta, who enjoyed very close ties
to the Catholic intellectual associations, who provided the most penetrat-
ing analysis on the subject of the crisis of Italian identity. Between June
1944 and April 1945 he wrote his book De profundis.22 According to
Satta, the armistice of 8 September 1943 had found ‘an Italy without
virtues’ and ‘indifferent to the misery into which it has fallen’ adding his
THE FUCI 1943–45: THE PATH TO POST-FASCISM 213
the general found themselves driven towards the worst path possible, that
of compromise, which was necessarily the path of betrayal’.28 The Italian
people, led by their government, instead of fighting a true war of libera-
tion, had handed over their conscience to the new British ally apparently
fighting for liberty. Yet for Satta it was an external and negative sense of
freedom. Indeed, he had harsh words for the British forces. The British
conception of liberty, according to the Catholic writer, was one ‘at the
service of wealth’ and, thus, it was a war not at the service of true liberty.29
For Satta it was the duty of Italians themselves to reconstruct the sense
of nationhood, without the help of foreign powers, a true sense of home-
land, which inevitably contained by definition a universal idea.30
Satta’s views may have been unusual in his outspoken criticism of the
Italian people. But the disappointment he expressed reflected the views
of many former fucini who had invested in the 1930s in the ideal of a
Catholic-inspired regeneration of the Italian nation. For those like Satta,
the prospect of a return to the parliamentary politics of the past was unap-
pealing in many respects.
period when ‘we understand each other less, we feel less the ties of broth-
erhood and the considerations of the interests of the nation are overcome
by the game of resentments and sterile criticisms’.34 He harshly criticised
the monarchy as a symbol of the state for its attitude after the armistice
and the way in which it had taken a position of ‘painful and extraordinary
holidays for the institutions … and the moral energies’ of the country.35
Above all, for the young Moro, Italy was suffering from a severe crisis of
faith in its own moral resources to recover from the catastrophe of the
Second World War. The Italian people were living through a period of
‘spiritual disorientation’ when they preferred ‘surrender to combat’ and
that had led them more and more to retire into the private sphere, ‘bitterly
concluding that nothing had changed and that nothing can’.36
Nearly a year after the armistice the situation had not changed much,
according to Aldo Moro. With the downfall of Fascism, Italians, after
some rapid and somewhat superficial optimism, had succumbed to a state
of disorientation, indifference, and confusion. Without clear objectives or
plans of action, devoid of a vigorous will to intervene and reorganise the
national community, the Italian masses ‘had returned home and let oth-
ers act for them’.37 In this state of passivity, the country had undergone a
transition from a totalitarian state to a situation of anarchy. The ensuing
result was that in present-day Italy ‘the State barely exists … its authority
is compromised, and with this, its possibility to act’.38
Aldo Moro put much of the blame for the existential and political pre-
dicament of the nation on the proliferation of political parties that, in his
opinion, were not up to the standards of a true and humanistic democratic
politics. According to the outlook of the young Catholic intellectual, most
of the existing political formations lacked a sense of idealistic impetus to
offer to the Italian people.39 Moro often spoke during these turbulent
times of the ‘coarseness and emptiness of official politics’40 that did not—
and could not—take into account by its very nature the inner world of
men and women and their personality. In this sense, he was a strenuous
advocate of a meta-political world, where people would achieve their inner
liberation and possession of the self.
Indeed, in an article of February 1945 he held forth eloquently about
his mistrust of traditional party politics and his faith in the meta-political
realm of existence:
Our position is in the opposition; our duty lies beyond politics. We have no
aspirations to govern, because we know that this apparent rule resolves itself
216 J. DAGNINO
in an impotence to govern the spirits …We want to talk the language of the
spirit, of art, of thought and religion. We do not seek power since it makes
us fearful. Power could render us conservatives … possessive of a selfish and
personal liberty. It could habituate us to compromise and duplicity. And we
want to be free, free with all the liberty of the spirit, so that we can condemn
all that has to be condemned.41
weapons of the ‘old’ political parties—a feature that in the end rendered
the Christian Democrats utterly unable to render justice and express the
complexities and rich social, political, and cultural nuances of the Italian
Catholic world.48 Furthermore, Moro saw the danger—and in this sense
the subsequent history of republican Italy would prove him right—of
De Gasperi’s men trying to monopolise the Catholic idea, and with this
the possibly embarrassing situation of the Italian Church being identified
with a political party. In Moro’s view, Christianity represented the high-
est experience of moral and spiritual responsibility, an experience that was
undermined in the political arena when its representatives entered into the
typical strategies of compromises, cunningness, and political and moral
flexibility.49
However, during the unsettling 1943–45 period, Moro did not limit
himself to a diagnosis of the malaises that in his perspective afflicted the
Italian nation. He additionally proposed some solutions to the predica-
ments from which his country and fellow citizens were suffering. For the
young Catholic intellectual, true liberation was above all an existential act.
In early 1945, following the Christian message, he wrote that in order to
get rid of the external evils that Italians were enduring it was mandatory
‘to liberate us from ourselves … to recover our soul. We expect, in this
possession of the self … to truly promote the liberty of the spirit.’50 It was
a call to Italian men and women to conquer their inner freedom, ‘an inte-
rior revolution, modest, simple in its forms but radical and overwhelming,
the revolution of understanding and of love’.51
Nevertheless, in the ideological trajectory of Aldo Moro during this
period, he also went beyond the realm of meta-politics and descended into
the sphere of politics as such. One of his main concerns was with the con-
cept of the ‘people’ and how to organise them in a fruitful social-political
community. This delicate historical and cultural process required a strong
element of education of the masses in an effort to nationalise them—
an attempt in which the state was to play a dominant role, according to
Moro. Above all, what was needed in the realm of politics was to ‘make it
more human’ in order to bring closer together the spheres of sociability
and politics.52 In the ruinous situation that Italy found itself, for Moro the
first task to be undertaken was clear: ‘the moral and political re-education
of the Italian people’.53 This implied the construction of solid moral foun-
dations upon which to undertake the difficult path to a post-Fascist era,
and to inculcate in the minds of Italians a responsible and constructive
attitude towards societal and political affairs.
218 J. DAGNINO
In this projected new state, Moro assigned a pivotal role to the notion
of a true democracy, since the new state had to be a democratic one in
order to encompass all the vital forces of the nation. Above all, for the
young Aldo Moro the essence of democracy lay in the respect and recogni-
tion of the dignity of the person and his rights within society, wedded with
the high responsibilities that such a conscious participation in societal and
political affairs entailed. Democracy was inseparable from liberty—a con-
cept that Moro underscored was not to be confused with ‘arbitrariness,
tyranny, fictions of popular and deceitful mystiques’ but to be grasped as
a rich substance of moral and ethical life.54 Democracy was the reign of
the constructive responsibility of all the citizens of a political community
in which equality of rights and duties should not be approached with a
mathematical exactitude, but in terms of a parity of dignity. Moro went
further, claiming that democracy lived and functioned thanks to an ‘aris-
tocracy that sustains and vivifies it … to realise its great aim of human
improvement’.55 During this period, Moro had a somewhat elitist and
pedagogical concept of democracy. Faithful to the traditions of the FUCI,
he conceived of a democracy where every citizen was called to play his or
her role, but where the more refined spirits would play the leading role.
Or, as Moro liked to put it, ‘the soul of democracy is an aristocracy of the
spirit’.56
In his democratic thought, Moro further distinguished between a ‘for-
mal’ and a ‘substantial’ version of democracy. The former was a false con-
ception, a sheer will of dominion, while the latter was the ‘true’ democracy.
Moro was convinced that the existence of elections and democratic insti-
tutions was not sufficient to generate a true and proper democratic order.
‘Substantial’ democracy was above all the awareness by a people of its right
to govern and the claim to recover the moral dignity of every individual.
In this sense, a ‘substantial’ democratic order ‘does not deny, but multi-
plies man’.57 Indeed, in the mind of the Catholic intellectual, democracy
came to be seen not as just another form of government among others but
as a sort of ‘natural’ and supratemporal political order. He spoke of the
‘eternal truth of democracy’, which he identified with the construction of
a better life for every man and woman.
In making these points, Moro was both reflecting his debt to the ideas of
the FUCI but also, through his personal reflections, going beyond them.
However, Moro’s writings demonstrate the importance of avoiding limit-
ing chronologically or organisationally the influence of the FUCI. The
association did have a considerable influence on how Italian Catholics
THE FUCI 1943–45: THE PATH TO POST-FASCISM 219
responded to the Fascist regime; but it also had a broader import for
the making of a Catholic mentality in Italy across the middle decades of
the twentieth century that continued well beyond the 1940s. Indeed, as
Moro’s subsequent long career demonstrated, the fucini in many respects
not only provided the leading figures in the Christian Democrat Party, but
also in the church and in other spheres of Catholic spiritual and associa-
tional life until the 1970s.58
Placed in this larger context, the importance of the FUCI appears
threefold. Above all, the FUCI was responsible for making concrete the
concept of the Catholic intellectuals, not as isolated individuals but as a
collective grouping in Italian society. This was of course not unique to
Italy, or to Catholicism. Throughout Europe in the 1930s and 1940s,
groups of primarily young educated men and women were at the forefront
in projects of political and social renaissance, which reflected the energy of
intellectual commitment generated by the solidarity created by a common
education.59 The FUCI was in this respect very much a product of its time:
a similar organisation would not have been possible in Italy prior to the
First World War, or after the social and institutional changes of the 1960s.
But it is also an important and powerful example of this phenomenon, and
one that has been unduly minimised by concerns with how far the FUCI
‘resisted’ Fascism, or paved the way for the Christian democratic politics
of the post-war era.
Secondly, the fucini reflected the importance of issues of ideology in
the trajectories of Catholic intellectual politics of the 1930s and the 1940s.
Much of the present discussion has been concerned with words rather
than matters of organisation. This choice was deliberate, and reflects the
way in which ideas—rather than the institutional relations with the church
or with the state—had the predominant influence on the way in which the
FUCI conceived its relationship to modern society. The leading figures
in the FUCI were people who took ideas seriously, which again reflected
the maturing of a distinctively Catholic intellectual culture in Italy since
the beginning of the twentieth century.60 But they also contributed to
those ideas. As this study has sought to demonstrate—and as the rich-
ness of Moro’s concluding reflections do—the fucini were not content
simply to repeat or recycle the ideas of others. They developed important
perspectives on the role of Catholicism in a society that they defined as
modern, as well as the role that Catholicism could play in making that
society more humane. Here, again, they were not alone; but they were
indisputably important—a point which has been unduly neglected in
220 J. DAGNINO
Notes
1. R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce. Catholic Students in Fascist Italy (New
York, 1990), 212.
2. ‘Possibilità di un ordine nuovo’, Azione fucina, 31 July 1943.
3. M. R. Catti De Gasperi (ed.), De Gasperi scrive. Corrispondenza con capi di
stato, cardinali, uomini politici, giornalisti, diplomatici, ii (Brescia, 1974),
271.
4. Giulio Andreotti, ‘Quelli di Prima’, Azione fucina, 18 August 1943. For a
similar opinion expressed by Andreotti see his letter to Mgr. Giuseppe
d’Avack written at the beginning of September 1943 in Archivio della
Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza 1943/44’.
5. Bianca Pignoni, ‘Forza dei giovani’, Azione fucina, 25 May 1945.
THE FUCI 1943–45: THE PATH TO POST-FASCISM 221
6. In a letter dated 31 July 1943 Spataro wrote to Andreotti that ‘we expect
from our friends from the FUCI a true and proper collaboration for the
formulation of a programme that must not exclude the masses, that look at
us with great trust’. The letter is in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI,
b. ‘Presidenza 1943/44’.
7. Andreotti to Ossicini, 31 July 1943 in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza 40–46’.
8. In a letter to Father Gilla Gremigni dated 28 June 1944, Andreotti
explained his decision as demonstration of his will to ‘bring into the politi-
cal arena that spirituality and disinterest that constitutes the strength of
Catholic Action’. The letter can be found in Archivio della Presidenza
Generale dell’Azione Cattolica, b.24.
9. Montini to Andreotti, 6 July 1944, in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza 1943/44’.
10. Andreotti to De Gasperi, 11 July 1944, in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza 1943/44’.
11. Antonio Olivi to Andreotti, 28 August 1943, in Archivio della Presidenza
della FUCI, b. ‘Azione Fucina 41–43’.
12. See, for example, memorandum from Emilio Guano to the regional eccle-
siastical assistants of the federation, 6 September 1944, in Archivio della
Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Azione Fucina 40–44’.
13. Guano to De Gasperi, 29 October 1944, in Archivio Emilio Guano, b.5,
‘Corrispondenza 1938–55’.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid.
17. C. Brizzolari, Un archivio della Resistenza in Liguria (Genoa, 1974),
373ff.
18. C. F. Casula, Cattolici-comunisti e sinistra cristiana (1938–1945) (Bologna,
1976), 128–29.
19. Emilio Guano, ‘Sguardo sul mondo’, Azione fucina, 10 December 1944.
20. Ivo Murgia, ‘Il nostro tempo’, Azione fucina, 10 December 1944.
21. Letter from Andreotti to Guido Anichini, 22 September 1943 in Archivio
della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Assistenti 1941/48’.
22. S. Satta, De profundis (Milan, 1980).
23. Ibid., 16. The noted Italian historian, Ernesto Galli della Loggia, has taken
up and developed Satta’s main theses in his monograph La morte della
patria. La crisi dell’idea di nazione tra Resistenza, antifascismo e Repubblica
(Rome and Bari, 1999).
24. Satta expressed the view that the disbandment of the army and the escape
of the Italian soldier rendered every one of them ‘beggars’. See his De
profundis, 174.
222 J. DAGNINO
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Index
G Guano, Emilio
Gaggia, Giacinto, 57–8 La Chiesa, 10n1, 84n59, 128,
Montini, letter to, 41n39, 59n3, 171n23, 192
61n45, 61n48, 61n51, 62n60 on modernisation of Catholic
Gemelli, Agostino, 8, 11n16, 107n1 Church, 69, 70, 119, 148,
Genocchi, Giovanni, 8 153, 189
Gentile, Emilio, 75, 89, 90, 103, Guardini, Romano, 123, 124, 126,
109n18, 159, 198 128, 137n27
Gentile, Giovanni, 103 gufini, 45, 50
Gerarchia, 164
German Faith Movement, 98
Gestapo, 96 H
Giordani, Igino, 91, 94, 108n7, Hauer, Jakob Wilhelm, 98–9
111n27, 112n47, 135n4 Hebblethwaite, Peter, 11n9, 15, 24n1,
Gioventù italiana del Littorio (GIL), 159 62n59
Giunchi, Giuseppe, 162, 177n128 Paul VI. The First Modern Pope,
Giuntella, Maria Cristina, 10n3, 11n8, 11n9, 15, 24n1, 62n59
16, 25n6, 29, 39n3, 41n34, Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
42n47, 59n13, 59n14, 83n37 Friedrich, 22
Giurati, Giovanni, 50, 59 Heidegger, Martin, 126
God-builders (Russia), 93. See also Herf, Jeffrey, 150, 152, 172n48,
League of the Militant Godless 173n61
Golzio, Silvio, 34, 40n18, 41n33, Herwegen, Ildefons, 126
176n117 Herzl, Theodor, 166
Gonella, Guido, 10n2, 19, 20, Hitler, Adolf, 97
25n18–20, 26n23–5, 26n27–8, Hitler Youth, 96, 99
31, 32, 40n20, 48, 97, 111n36, Holy See, 36, 49, 52, 54, 96, 184
113n74 Concordat with Hitler, 1933,
Gotelli, Angela Luigi, 11n13, 48, 113n61
59n17, 61n40, 62n62
Grazioli, Angelo, 142, 170n1
Great Depression, 148 I
Great War, 5, 7, 57, 70, 75, 76, Il Cittadino di Brescia, 6
84n56, 98, 99, 104, 109n18, Il lavoro fascista, 49, 60n21–2
187, 195, 196, 198, 203n31. See imperialism, 78, 93, 129, 163
also First World War Institute of Superior Religious Culture
Griffin, Roger, 70, 81n21, 109n18, for Lay People at the Gregorian
174n82 University, 57
Grondona, Luigi, 5, 52, 60n25, Irish constitution, 146
60n30, 61n41 Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale
gruppi universitari fascisti (Fascist (IRI), 164
University Groups (GUF)), 37, Italian Popular Party, 4, 6, 51, 68, 71,
42n47, 45, 59n13, 108n4, 174n80 148, 214
250 INDEX
S T
Salesians order, 134 Tacchi Venturi, Pietro, 46
Saraceno, Pasquale, 212 Taviani, Paolo Emilio, 10n2, 34,
Sargolini, Federico, 75, 84n56 41n29, 78, 86n74, 135n8, 155,
Satta, Salvatore, 212–14, 221n22, 174n85, 175n85, 175n86,
221n24 177n120, 212
De profundis, 212, 221n22, Third Republic, France, 143, 170n6
221n24, 222n29 Thorez, Maurice, 143
Scaglia, Giovanni Battista, 15, 24n4, Tilmann, Fritz, 126
201n2, 203n29 Toniolo, Giuseppe, 38, 42n53
Schuster, Ildefonso, Archbishop of Totalitarian Movements and Political
Milan, 50, 66 Religions, 89, 110n21–2,
Schwartz, Sanford, 132, 140n87 114n76, 135n2
Scoppola, Pietro, 10n1, 73, 79n3, Tragella, G. B., 95, 113n56
83n42, 84n59, 115n110 ‘totalitarian religion’, 95
Scorza, Carlo, 49, 50, 60n24, 60n25 Traniello, Francesco, 10n1, 74, 83n40,
Second Republic, Spain, 144, 191 83n42–3, 115n110, 178n147,
Second Vatican Council (1962–65), 9, 200n1, 202n21, 222n32
68, 136n23 Trebeschi, Andrea, 7
Second World War, 1, 4, 9, 25n18, 68, Tridentine ecclesiological model, 74
136n23, 161, 180n170, 183,
186, 207n89, 215
Sepe, Elvira, 22, 26n45, 27n47 U
September Accords (1931), 52–3, 55, University of Tubingen, Catholic
61n39 Theology Faculty, 126
Social Christians, 212 Uomini cattolici, 66
socialism, 32–4, 80n14, 89, 91, 93,
95–101, 111n43, 114n76,
114n89, 115n99, 155, 156, 158, V
160 Vatican, 6, 7, 9, 27n46, 29, 36, 37, 46,
Socialist Party, 36 47, 51, 52, 54, 56, 59n7, 59n13,
Spanish Civil War, 72, 144, 146, 68, 75, 85n60, 96, 111n26,
170n16, 185, 186 117n147, 136n23, 137n27,
Spataro, Giuseppe, 35, 210, 221n6 138n56, 145, 184, 185, 204n38
254 INDEX