Dagnino - Faith and Fascism Catholic Intellectuals in Italy, 1925-43 (2017) PDF

HISTORIES OF THE SACRED AND SECULAR
Faith and Fascism

Catholic Intellectuals
in Italy, 1925–43
Jorge Dagnino
Histories of the Sacred and Secular, 1700–2000
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David Nash
Department of History
Oxford Brookes University
Oxford, United Kingdom
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Jorge Dagnino
Faith and Fascism

Catholic Intellectuals in Italy, 1925–43
Jorge Dagnino
Institute of History
Universidad de los Andes
Santiago, Chile
ISBN 978-1-137-44893-4 ISBN 978-1-137-44894-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959976
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Acknowledgments
It is a pleasure to be able to thank a number of people and institutions

that have encouraged and contributed to the completion of this book. My
warmest gratitude goes to Professors Martin Conway and John Pollard,
who read the entire manuscript and invariably provided insightful com-
ments as well as support.
In Rome I received the patient assistance at several archives and librar-
ies; the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Istituto per la Storia dell’Azione
cattolica e del movimento cattolico in Italia Paolo VI, the Biblioteca Luigi
Sturzo, and the Biblioteca di Storia Moderna e Contemporanea.
I would also like to express my gratitude to the journals Contemporary
European History and the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, for granting
me copyright permission for work previously published in these distin-
guished publications.
The research for this book would have been impossible without the
generous assistance of my FONDECYT grant project N. 3140039.
Finally, I am enormously indebted to my family for their unyielding
love and support during these years. My parents Monica and Jorge, my
three brothers and my three nephews have unfailingly provided with
much-needed joy across the years.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather Julio Dagnino,
who passed away during the writing of this monograph.
v
Contents
1 Introduction 1
Part 1 The FUCI 1925–3313
2 The FUCI and the Conquest of the Modern World:

1925–1933 15
3 The Architecture of the City of God: Politics and

Society During the Montini-Righetti Era 29
4 The FUCI and Fascism, 1925–33 45
Part 2 The FUCI 1933–39 63
5 A Path to Modernity: The Fuci in the 1930s 65
6 The Crisis of Civilisation and the Sacralisation of Politics

in 1930s Europe 87
vii
viii Contents
7 FUCI Ideas in the 1930s: The Search for a

New Spiritual Order 119
8 Building the New Order, 1933–39 141
Part 3 The FUCI 1939–43181
9 Catholic Students at War: The FUCI 1940–43 183
10 The FUCI 1943–45: The Path to Post-Fascism 209
Bibliography225
Index245
CHAPTER 1
Introduction
This is a study of the main ideological developments and currents of the

Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI) between 1925 and
1943; that is, the period during which the Fascist regime enjoyed its great-
est power. The FUCI was the official organisation for the laity of Italian
Catholic Action for the university sector and still exists today.1
As such, it was an important element of the lay Catholic world within
Fascist Italy, as well as having a wider presence within Italian society.
Thus, the study of the FUCI provides a means of studying the dynamics
of Catholicism within Fascist Italy. At the same time, however, the FUCI
has a wider significance for the study of Catholic politics and intellectual
ideas within Italy, as a remarkably large proportion of the future Christian
Democrats who would rule the destinies of the country after the Second
World War received much of their intellectual training in the ranks of the
federation.2 Additionally, in the 1925–33 period, the central ecclesiastical
assistant of the organisation was Giovanni Battista Montini, the future
Pope Paul VI.
Despite its importance, the existing literature on the FUCI is still some-
what sparse and mostly of apologetic nature, perhaps due to the fact that
the overwhelming majority of the studies have been written by former
fucini, as the members of the association were known. Moreover, the bulk
of the existing historiography on the FUCI has unsurprisingly tended to
focus on the formation of the Christian Democrat elite and the intellectual
© The Author(s) 2017 1

J. Dagnino, Faith and Fascism, Histories of the Sacred and Secular,
1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_1
2 J. DAGNINO
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
s ituation was different. By 1929, 50 % of the fucini were also members of

the Fascist University Groups and the numbers continued to rise through-
out the period.4 It is, therefore, difficult to define the FUCI as anti-Fascist
even during the Montini-Righetti administration. A similar ambivalence
characterised the response on the part of the Catholic students to the
signing of the Lateran Pacts in February 1929. Above all, there was a
widespread sense among the fucini that the pacts—and especially the con-
cordat—were a great triumph for the cause of Catholicism in Italy and a
great historical opportunity to reaffirm the primacy of the spiritual over
material and secularising tendencies.
The history of the association between 1933 and 1939 has generally
been portrayed as a time of conservatism and cultural conformism, which
marked the high point of the appeal of Fascism among the fucini. Instead,
it is contended in this chapter that this period was a crucial one in the
development of an alternative form of Catholic modernity, and that, in
this respect, the encounter with some aspects of Fascism was a fruitful one,
enabling the FUCI to maintain an individual identity. The 1930s were a
pivotal time for the engagement of the church and the FUCI with mod-
ern aspects of life such as technological advances, urbanisation, cinema,
youth consciousness, 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 pres-
ence in society.
An important aspect of this evolution concerned the response of the
fucini to the phenomenon of the sacralisation of politics or the emergence
of political religions during the 1930s. Despite the recent proliferation of
publications on this topic, the perspective of contemporary Catholics has
rarely been investigated. This section seeks to fill this void by analysing
the reactions of the Catholic intellectuals to the political religions estab-
lished by Bolshevik Russia, National Socialist Germany, and Fascist Italy.
I stress the point that the fucini viewed the emergence of political reli-
gions in totalitarian states not just as a simple historical regression to bar-
baric times, but also as a by-product of modernity itself. Indeed, for some
Catholic intellectuals the notions of totalitarianism, political religions, and
modernity formed part of an interrelated cluster of concepts.
Faced by the novel challenge presented by the so-called ‘political reli-
gions’, the university students of the 1930s were well aware of the need to
offer a new type of religiosity, attractive to the new generations. Above all,
this religiosity had to be in line with the needs of an emerging mass society.
4 J. DAGNINO
Christianity was presented as a palingenetic force, as an integral revolution

capable of mobilising the masses in an effort to sacralise them in an age of
mass politics and secularisation. Against the fragmentation of modern men
and women, within a liberal individualist society, Catholicism offered a
unifying and organic vision capable of transcending the deleterious effects
of the liberal version of modernity that so badly needed to be countered.
Thus, the picture that emerges from this analysis of the FUCI of the 1930s
is their often-creative engagement with the issues of modernity. In par-
ticular, the book analyses the fascination exercised over the imagination of
the Catholic students by such modern features and figures as the engineer,
technology, the world of the professions, cinema, and Fascist-style corpo-
rativism as manifestations of the dawn of a new epoch.
The last substantial section analyses the years during which the FUCI
was run by Aldo Moro and Giulio Andreotti. Its main purpose is to exam-
ine the attitudes of the Catholic students during the Second World War
and dispel the myth that before, or at the beginning of the conflict, the
student association became anti-Fascist. On the contrary, it is demon-
strated that the support given by the fucini to the Italian war effort lasted
well into the conflict. Above all, this final chapter deals with the religious
experience of the FUCI during the Second World War. It contends that
the most salient features of the war experience of the university students
are to be located in the spiritual domain and in their effort to contrive a
religiosity adapted to warfare and modernity in general, interlaced with
the powerful myth of a Catholic Italy that, at least in the early stages of the
conflict, fuelled the expectations of many in the federation of the primor-
dial role to be played by Italy in a new world order.
Finally, the epilogue deals with the years 1943–45, that is, after the col-
lapse of the Fascist regime. Contrary to what has generally been assumed,
namely that the vast majority of the Catholic intellectuals immediately
joined the ranks of the Christian Democrat party after the demise of
Mussolini, it is argued and demonstrated that for many fucini the transition
to this political formation was far from being a smooth passage. Moreover,
it is contended that the Catholic students during these two crucial years in
Italian history were concerned with more pressing issues such as liberation
and reconstruction, and fears of the death of the nation. Furthermore, a
gulf existed between the fucini and the pre-1922 Popular Party of Luigi
Sturzo and Alcide De Gasperi. Rather than following the call of the latter
for a united political front of Italian Catholics, many Catholic students and
ecclesiastical assistants, such as Emilio Guano, opted for a line of political
INTRODUCTION 5
pluralism. The epilogue concludes by analysing the case of Aldo Moro as

an excellent example of these trends.
With regard to primary sources, besides journals, periodicals, and other
printed material, my research has benefited from the consultation of the
following archives: the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, the Archivio della
Presidenza della FUCI, the Archivio del Movimento Laureati, the Archivio
della Presidenza Generale dell’ Azione Cattolica, the Archivio Luigi
Grondona, and the Archivio Emilio Guano. Indeed, one of the principal
innovations of this book concerns the wide range of archival sources upon
which it is based. Many of these sources have not been formerly exploited
by historians of the FUCI in any great detail. This enables a much more
detailed picture to be reconstructed of the dynamics of the organisation. I
have, however, been at pains throughout to eschew an organisational his-
tory of the FUCI. This constitutes the most familiar aspect of the history
of the federation, but tends to lead to a neglect of the way in which the
fucini—in common with Catholic student groups elsewhere—constitute
an important example of the wider ideological militancy in the interwar
years. Instead, this book is principally concerned with matters of Catholic
thought and ideology during the Fascist regime. Thus, I have therefore
given emphasis to the substantial publications of the FUCI, most notice-
ably their periodical Azione fucina and their journal Studium, as well as to
the other writings of fucini that shed light on their intellectual evolution.5
In doing so, I hope that this work provides not only an innovative history
of the FUCI, but also contributes to the wider history of Catholic intel-
lectual life in Europe during these tumultuous decades.
The History of the FUCI
As an introduction to the material which follows, it might be useful pro-

vide a brief overview of the FUCI and its principal figures. The FUCI was
founded in September 1896 as a branch of Catholic Action, dedicated,
as has been recalled, to work among Italy’s university student popula-
tion.6 For the purposes of this study, the years that followed the Great
War are particularly significant in the history of the federation. During
this period, the organisation was characterised by its tight relationships
with the Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) founded by the Sicilian priest
Luigi Sturzo in 1919—a link, however, that would progressively weaken
during the following years. These were difficult years, as a consequence
of the Fascist seizure of power in 1922. Fascism did not look favourably
6 J. DAGNINO
upon an organisation that sought to exercise an autonomous role within

the world of Italian universities and which thus stood in sharp contrast to
the regime’s totalitarian aspirations in educational matters. Additionally,
the FUCI had to face some difficult moments within the Catholic move-
ment and the papacy itself which, in its aim to distance itself and aban-
don the Popular Party in order to bring about a rapprochement with the
Fascist regime, sought to curtail some of its traditional prerogatives and
autonomy. This was manifested, above all, by the new statutes for Catholic
Action of 1923, the main features of which were its increasing centralisa-
tion and subordination to clerical control of the lay body.7
At the national congress of the FUCI of 1925, celebrated in Bologna,
the Catholic students made the mistake of placing the event under the
patronage of the Italian king, a gesture which, in a period when the Roman
Question was still unresolved, provoked the fury of Pius XI. This led to
the resignation of the then-central ecclesiastical assistant of the federation,
Luigi Piastrelli, and the national president Pietro Lizier.8 Moreover—and
more importantly for the history of the organisation—the Vatican hence-
forth ended the FUCI’s tradition of autonomy, expressed notably by the
democratic election of their national leaders. From then on, all nomina-
tions would be made directly by the Vatican. It was in this troubled con-
text that Giovanni Battista Montini and Igino Righetti were designated
as central ecclesiastical assistant and national president of the association,
respectively.
Giovanni Battista Montini was born in Concesio near Brescia in 1897,9
into a family of upper middle class that was very active in the Catholic
movement of the day. His father Giorgio was one of the most distinguished
exponents of the Brescian Catholic movement and one of the founders—
and later parliamentary deputy for—the Partito Popolare Italiano together
with personalities such as Luigi Sturzo. He was also an active journalist
and directed the Catholic periodical Il Cittadino di Brescia.10 Thanks to
his father, the young Giovanni Battista would become acquainted, from a
very early age, with the leading personalities of the Catholic movement of
his region and of the PPI in particular.
The young Montini received his education at the Jesuit-run institu-
tion Cesare Arici, characterised by the strong classical training given to its
pupils, and a traditionalist religious education. At the same time, Montini
frequented the church and Philippine Oratory of Santa Maria della Pace.
It was here that he became acquainted with Father Giulio Bevilacqua—
who would exercise a strong influence upon him, as will be seen—and
INTRODUCTION 7
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
the FUCI—although it was not a mass organisation in Fascist Italy—was,

nevertheless, capable of attracting some of the best minds among Italian
youth, a feature that gave it its distinct elitist dimension. Moreover, this
latter characteristic was in large part responsible for the strong sense of
militancy and spiritual cleansing that characterised the organisation.
Within the Catholic world of Fascist Italy, the FUCI was a prominent
organisation and was by far the most sophisticated and influential in intel-
lectual terms. After the Second World War, the federation faced new chal-
lenges within the context of the newly born Italian Republic. The FUCI,
for example, contributed 35 of its former members to the Constituent
Assembly of 1946. Another challenge that the Catholic students had to
confront in the post-war period was the reality of the organisational struc-
tures of Catholic Action. Especially after the elections of April 1948, with
the founding of the civic committees, the prevailing trend within the lay
body was one of electoral and political mobilisation. In the face of this
reality, the FUCI strenuously defended its sphere of autonomy as an intel-
lectual grouping committed to serious work of apostolate among univer-
sity students.
During the 1950s, the federation had to face the reality of rapid eco-
nomic growth that, together with the modernisation of society, was accel-
erating the course of secularisation. In response, the FUCI felt the urgent
need to address the problems and anxieties that were afflicting modern
men and women, as well as imposing upon itself the task of breaking the
barriers that existed between daily life, culture, and spirituality. As a con-
sequence, the role and participation of Catholics in the life of society was
the most pressing issue of the 1950s for the FUCI.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, the association underwent a crisis of
identity. The emergence of direct democracy, spontaneous groups, and the
wider radical transformation of established structures of association under
the pressure of movements of global contestation could not but provoke
a deep crisis of purpose and identity within the FUCI. This, however, did
not lead to its dissolution. Instead, the organisation took the principal
themes from the message of the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) in
order to construct the FUCI around the so-called scelta religiosa or reli-
gious option—an alternative that privileged the vision of Catholicism as
spiritual ferment of the contemporary world. It is this vision of the FUCI
that has prevailed to the present day.
10 J. DAGNINO
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
The FUCI 1925–33

CHAPTER 2
The FUCI and the Conquest of the Modern

World: 1925–1933
The prevailing interpretations in the historiography of the FUCI during

the period of 1925–33—that is, of the years when the organisation was led
by Giovanni Battista Montini and Igino Righetti—tend to underscore the
alleged openness and willingness of the federation to enter into dialogue
with the modern world, with a positive stance to rescue what was true and
good in it, and not with the attitude of condemnation and anathemas that
was so common in Catholic circles of the time. Instead of an approach
characterised by a categorical negation of the features of the modern
world and of modernity in general, the FUCI supposedly endeavoured
to rescue the characteristics of the times that could be brought into line
with the spirit of Catholicism, always sensitive to the needs and yearnings
of modern men and women. This is especially the case for the depiction
of the thought and activities of the central ecclesiastical assistant Giovanni
Battista Montini. Thus stated Peter Hebblethwaite, in his noted biogra-
phy of the future pontiff entitled Paul VI. The First Modern Pope.1 More
recently, Giselda Adornato has published a biography of Paul VI with the
suggestive title Paolo VI. Il coraggio della modernità (Paul VI. The courage
of modernity).2 According to Richard J. Wolff, in the only English account
of the history of the association, the hallmark of the Montini-Righetti
administration was the profound belief of its members in the compatibility
of faith and reason, scientific research and the secular and religious realms.3
For his part, Giovanni Battista Scaglia has insisted on the FUCI’s—and

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_2
16 J. DAGNINO
especially Montini’s—openness to the values of modern culture and to

the notion of true liberty and personhood as core characteristics of the
organisation during these years.4 Along similar lines, Massimo Marcocchi
has argued that what was central to the FUCI between 1925 and 1933
was the conscious effort to build a bridge between the church and the
modern world in order to create a harmonious balance and not to hide
behind defensive trenches or sterile anathemas—an attitude that was so
common among many intransigent Catholic circles of the time.5 For her
part, Maria Cristina Giuntella affirms that the FUCI’s cultural approach
was one devoid of traditional apologetics and spirit of conquest, concen-
trating its efforts rather on transforming culture as a means of dialogue
with the modern world.6 Following a similar interpretation, the foremost
historian of the FUCI, Renato Moro, has asserted that the cultural line
of the FUCI under Montini and Righetti was one of assimilation, not of
conquest of the modern world. Furthermore, he insists that the approach
adopted by the Catholic intellectuals tried to create a just balance between
modernity and tradition, capable of rescuing what was true and vital in the
modern world. According to Moro, during this period the FUCI refused
to engage in stances of a priori condemnations, opting instead for a seri-
ous and impartial analysis of secular culture, leaving behind any legacies
of fanatical anti-modernism or a categorical disapproval of the modern
world.7 Finally, Antonio Acerbi has written of Montini’s ‘extraordinary
sensitivity for comprehending and appreciating the aspirations, feelings
and thoughts of his contemporaries’.8
In contrast to this consensus, it is argued in this chapter that, while
there is certainly some degree of truth to their assertions, the picture they
depict is incomplete. Instead it is proposed that there was a high degree of
ambiguity and ambivalence with regard to the modern world and moder-
nity in general. Moreover, in the analysis that follows, a much more con-
servative Montini and FUCI emerge, an association that was not devoid of
a spirit of conquest or of militant Catholicism, as will be seen. To a large
extent, the cultural line followed by the fucini was one of a wholehearted
condemnation of many aspects of the modern world and was animated
by an intransigent spirit of restoration of a Christian society, fuelled by a
vision of an ideological and totalising Catholicism.
As has been stated, the vision of the FUCI as open to the modern
world, sensitive to its needs and yearnings, does have some partial ground-
ing in fact. Fausto Montanari, a FUCI activist, admitted that what pulled
many youths of his day away from the Catholic Church was its image as
THE FUCI AND THE CONQUEST OF THE MODERN WORLD: 1925–1933 17
‘a closed system that imposed the renunciation of everything that was

beautiful beyond it’.9 Montanari went on to propound the need to leave
behind a mentality of purely negative criticisms and to live Christianity
in a more optimistic and fruitful way, with an eye to finding what was
worthwhile in the modern world. Similarly, Giovanni Battista Montini,
although in general a harsh critic of contemporary civilisation, at times
recognised that perhaps ‘our intransigence has been sterile and separatist
… and for that reason it has not formed consciences’.10 In another article,
and perhaps more forcefully, the ecclesiastical assistant acknowledged that
throughout history the church had not always given the secular world the
attention that it deserved and that this was a great failure of the virtue
of charity: ‘We often ignore this world that surrounds us … we ignore
it because we do not love it as we should; and we do not love it, simply
because we do not love’.11
However, these statements should not lead us to consider the FUCI
in the 1925–33 period as an open or progressive association, confident
in its relationship with modern culture and its manifold manifestations.
On the contrary, what was most apparent in its attitude to the modern
world in these years was a spirit of combat and conquest of contemporary
civilisation.
The Conquest of the Modern World

The Catholic Church, since at least the French Revolution, had depicted
with horror the modern world as an entity characterised by a spirit of
laicism, worship of the state, subjectivism and relativism, as well as an ever-
growing lack of public morality and religious indifference, if not atheism.12
For many in the FUCI the history of civilisation since the Middle Ages was
visualised as a progressive development of corruption, departures from
the orthodoxy defended by the church, if not the history of sin. Many
Catholic intellectuals in the ranks of the association shared this perspec-
tive, and thus sought as the only remedy to this malaise the figure of a
militant Catholic Church, developing what can be called a ‘fortress men-
tality’ among its members. Vincenzo Arcozzi Masino fully embodied this
mentality. He spoke of the diverse FUCI branches across Italy as blessed
places where one ‘could breathe a purer and healthier air than the one we
are constrained to breathe outside, in the society that is not ours’.13 For
Arcozzi Masino, the alleged vast spiritual crisis that still affected his age
began after the Middle Ages, in a new configuration of the state and the
18 J. DAGNINO
concept of sovereignty, whereby progressively the nation state was born

and the state started to assume roles that had customarily been the privi-
lege of the church. In this fashion the ‘universal spirit’ of medieval times
was forever broken, and since then the world had lived in a perpetual cri-
sis. He went on to protest at how in nearly every country education and
marriage were secular, how the pontiff was excluded from the League of
Nations, among other manifestations of laicism. In this fashion, the church
had lost every opportunity to regain its right and duty to assume its appro-
priate directing role over society. In Arcozzi Masino’s view, Catholics had
to react in a firm, energetic way to the spirit that animated modern civilisa-
tion—that is, laicism, atheistic philosophy, humanism and the rest ‘of the
human degenerations’.14
For his part, the Dominican Mario Cordovani called upon the fucini to
launch a strenuous struggle against laicism and subjectivism in the world
of the universities. In the Dominican’s outlook, these flaws of the contem-
porary world had led people to measure everything according to purely
human standards and to immediate success, annihilating any trace of a
true spiritual dimension on earth. He called upon the university students
to become ‘soldiers of Christ’ in an effort that was not about ‘adapting
ourselves to the others, but rather how to elevate all to the divine truth’.
In sum, the Catholic intellectuals’ duty was how to ‘render the world
Christian and not how to render mundane Christianity’.15
Others, in what was a common mindset in many European Catholics
during the interwar years, traced the roots of the crisis of modern society
to the beginnings of the Renaissance, where they saw the birth of bour-
geois civilisation that led to the development of a philosophy of the senses
and positivism. The Renaissance was to blame for shattering the suppos-
edly harmonious balance that had existed during medieval times between
spirit and matter, which had reached its apex during the thirteenth cen-
tury. From then on incoherence of thought and life and spiritual unrest
had prevailed in the world. Afterwards, with the French Revolution, mat-
ters had turned for the worse, with a gigantic impulse from man to con-
struct a universe where God was neglected and ignored, a world based
solely on the faculties of man.16 This in turn led to a mechanistic and
restless conception of human life, to a sense of adventure for adventure’s
sake, where the final and transcendental goal vanished from the horizon of
men’s minds, guiding the contemporary world to a frightening reality of
extreme spiritual poverty.17
Certainly one of the harshest detractors of modern times among the

Catholic intellectuals was Guido Gonella, who conducted a systematic
campaign of denunciation against the so-called evils of modernity.18 He
denounced the twentieth century as a time of wanderers, hopeless people
who could not even begin to think of the supranatural goods. He sol-
emnly proclaimed that ‘we are anti-twentieth century because we are for
the aristocracy of the spirit. We need to create the aristocracy of the repre-
sentative men, that is of the good and virtuous since only virtue is worthy
to be represented.’19 Such an elitist conception was common within FUCI
branches of the time, that is the notion that they were a selected group of
youth destined to restore everything in Christ and to rule the destinies of
the nation in the future. Moreover, Gonella held modernity responsible
for the loss of the primacy of the religious dimension of life. In histori-
cal terms, he traced the roots of this evolution to Luther, Descartes, and
Rousseau. With Luther, modernity had been directed along the path of
sheer protestant individualism. For his part, Descartes was to blame for
constructing a purely rationalistic philosophy that left aside the transcen-
dental. Finally, Rousseau had introduced into the modern world a subjec-
tive, romantic, and revolutionary spirit that could only lead to anarchic
revolts. Modernity was an entity where there prevailed experience, senti-
ment, subjectivity, criticism, immanence, and rebellion. Guido Gonella
summed up his position in apocalyptic terms by stating that ‘perhaps today
we are more diabolic because modernity has taught us very well how to
divinise sin’.20 Gonella, like many fucini during the 1925–33 period, did
not exhibit a spirit of dialogue or pluralism with the modern world. For
Gonella and others the path was clear: to re-conquer the modern world
for Catholic dogma, because only in Catholicism was the whole and abso-
lute truth found. Moreover, ‘Catholicism is the spirit of every genuine
civilisation’.21
Another aspect of twentieth-century culture that Gonella detested was
the excess of technology. While he gave a lukewarm support to technology
as an unavoidable reality in modern times, he firmly rejected any notion
that it should become an end in itself.22 What he primarily abhorred about
technology was that it fragmented the world and man into a myriad of
small and insignificant compartments, leading people to live a mechanistic
life, losing sight of an integral and unitary conception of human existence.
He attributed its origins to a philosophy of positivism and empiricism that
recognised no other reality than the one perceived through the senses. He
was convinced that contemporary man was living in a ‘machine c ivilisation’
20 J. DAGNINO
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
their darkest impulses and instincts, leading a feverish, convulsed, obses-

sively dynamic, and more violent—and ever-rapid—life.28 In another writ-
ing, the ecclesiastical assistant qualified his times as a period dominated by
an activistic, anti-rational, and anti-ethical mentality, a revolutionary age
that sought to destroy everything that was worthy of the human spirit.29
Moreover, modern man, trained in the spirit of corrosive criticism and
subjectivism, infatuated with rationalism had built an autonomous ethics,
based upon his passions, utopias, and aberrations, and all this while con-
temporary society impassively assisted in the demolition of the ‘aristocratic
conception of life inherited from the Middle Ages’.30 Montini admonished
the men and women of his time to reconcile themselves with tradition,
‘our best spiritual patrimony … and her medieval faith’.31 Montini pre-
sented tradition not as a fossilised entity but rather as a vital and dynamic
source of civilisation, and of true human progress. It was also a guarantee
against those who thought ‘novelty should be sought through revolution
rather than through renovation’.32 Tradition further taught to love and
cherish the true hierarchy of human values, such as the family, the church,
the home, language, and fatherland, among others. The ecclesiastical
assistant had no hesitations in this regard: ‘tradition is the vital identity of
Catholicism’.33 In his defence of tradition, Giovanni Battista Montini went
as far as advocating the papacy of the reactionary Pius IX. He even posi-
tively evaluated Pius IX’s Syllabus of 1864. In the mind of Montini, this
ecclesiastical text was ‘instead of being a document of senile intransigence,
a statement that had shown the path to the blossoming of Catholic spiri-
tual youth’.34 In fact the Syllabus had been an integral condemnation, an
expression of total revulsion on the part of the papacy towards secular and
rationalist modernity. It rebuked, among other characteristics that were
developing in the modern world, liberty of conscience and thought, the
secularisation of the state, the non-confessional school, and philosophical,
historical, and scientific rationalism. It concluded by stating that it was a
fundamental mistake to think ‘that the Roman Pontiff can and should rec-
oncile himself with progress, liberalism and modern civilisation’.35
In Montini’s line of thought, the supreme responsibility of the Catholic
intellectuals was to conquer and convert the modern world—a world that
had lost its spiritual pillars. For Montini, the main task was to impose on his
age principles, sacred ideas, and eternal wisdom.36 In this sense, according
to the ecclesiastical assistant of the fucini, a spirit of ‘conquest’ and ‘com-
bat’ had to prevail in the battle to win back modern society to the Catholic
ranks.37 Only by following this path would Catholicism recover its eternal
22 J. DAGNINO
right to ‘govern modern conscience’.38 Montini went on to state that in

the present extreme and critical condition of Western civilisation, the sole
way to influence and channel the modern world back to Christian dogma
was to assume a ‘sharp intransigence of ideas and customs’, an intransi-
gence that in Montini’s perspective was the best manner to preserve the
purity of the practice and doctrine of Christianity.39 He finally admonished
the university students to assume the ‘integralism of their own faith’.40 In
sum, in Montini’s mind, one of the main tasks of the FUCI of his time was
to infuse into the Catholic youth of his age the conscience of pertaining
to a ‘vigorous militia’, the role and principal responsibility of which was to
restore the principles and Christian traditions into the twentieth century.41
The principal challenge facing these FUCI intellectuals was how to
reconcile this somewhat utopian desire of conquering the modern world
with an integral vision of Catholicism. In the 1925–33 period, the FUCI
returned to two principal instruments to achieve their goals: the insis-
tence on forming a militant or ideal fucino—from contemporary men
and women the sense of the absolute, a sense that only Thomism could
recover. Only Aquinas—the ‘apostle of modern times’—could resolve the
most pressing predicaments and contradictions affecting the people of the
twentieth century; nature and the supernatural, intellectualism and volun-
tarism, among others.42
Others in the Catholic organisation went on to proclaim Aquinas as
a national glory, a sort of nationalisation of Aquinas’s figure, thereby
uniting religion and love of the fatherland. For example, the Dominican
Mario Cordovani, proclaimed Aquinas as ‘our greatest national glory’,
and Thomism as ‘one of the noblest affirmations of Italianism and
Catholicism’.43 Likewise, the Jesuit Paolo Dezza ridiculed those Italian
philosophers who followed Hegel as an example of a sad ‘servitude’ and
all the others who were devotees of ‘exotic philosophies’, while Thomists
developed the superior task of acting as apologists for ‘our religion and
for our identity as Italians, developing a highly patriotic duty … through
exalting the most radiant philosophical glory of the Italian genius’.44
No account of the history of neo-Thomism in the FUCI during the
1925–33 period would be complete without making a reference to the
influence exercised by the French philosopher Jacques Maritain,45 espe-
cially upon Giovanni Battista Montini.46 Some have exaggerated this
influence, like Elvira Sepe, for whom Jacques Maritain represented for
the FUCI during the years under consideration a new cultural direction
that differentiated it from the rest of the Italian Catholic cultural world,
in terms, yet again, of a positive confrontation with modernity. She goes

as far as to claim that this new cultural line was embedded in the values of
‘the person, liberty and democracy’.47 Along similar lines, Renato Moro
and Massimo Papini have spoken of an influence of the French philoso-
pher that induced the fucini to consider Thomism in a more open and
critical, problematic fashion.48
In 1928 Montini translated and wrote an introduction to Maritain’s
book Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, Rousseau—a monograph pub-
lished by Morcelliana—which enjoyed very close ties with the FUCI. This
book still formed part of the anti-modern period of the French philoso-
pher’s intellectual itinerary, characterised by a wholesale rejection of the
modern world and modernity in general. Nevertheless, the ecclesiasti-
cal assistant of the federation had high words of praise for this work.49
According to Montini, the book was a precious tool for ‘the spiritual edu-
cation of youth and the philosophical education of Catholics, not exclud-
ing ecclesiastics’.50 He further extolled Maritain for locating the ‘true’
roots of modernity, that is, in subjectivism and in its concomitant relativ-
ism. Indeed, subjectivism was, in Giovanni Battista Montini’s mind, the
origin of the three revolutions treated by Maritain in his book, ‘religious
with Luther, philosophical with Descartes, social with Rousseau’, all three
of which were responsible for ‘the suffering … of our century’.51 Finally, in
an intransigent and anti-modern fashion, Montini summarily condemned
the three thinkers treated by Maritain: ‘Luther had no religion, Descartes
had no rationality, Rousseau had no social morality.’52
Jacques Maritain published a number of articles in Azione Fucina
between 1930 and 1933. What is most important about them is that
they exhibit an evolution of his patterns of thought, roughly from the
Maritain of Antimoderne to the Maritain in transition to his fundamental
Integral Humanism of 1936. Although the French philosopher still spoke
of ‘recovering the spirit of conquest’ of Aquinas,53 he now rejected any
notion of desiring a return to the Middle Ages, even though he expressed
an admiration for the spiritual guidelines that had dominated that his-
torical period. The French philosopher and theologian now effectively
expressed a more open form of Thomism, while not leaving completely
aside its aspect of militancy and conquest. He wrote of the philosophy of
Aquinas as a system of thought that should ‘search everywhere for ele-
ments of concord rather than disagreement, fragments of truth, rather
than deficiencies and deviations, to save and assimilate rather than to bat-
ter down’.54 Moreover, in a somewhat utopian fashion, Maritain went on
24 J. DAGNINO
to add that Thomism offered a ‘Christian conception of a new world’.55

Nevertheless, however more open Maritain’s Thomism had become, it
never completely lost its sense of conquest and triumphalism, that tended
to ‘purify modern thought’. It was additionally the sole philosophy that
was synthetic and assimilative, the only pattern of thought capable of ren-
dering intelligible all the expressions of the natural and human worlds.56
Montini himself reflected the influence of the French philosopher when
he spoke in 1932 of the need for a Thomism that was vital and fecund, a
form of philosophy that was constructive and looked to the future. In his
words, ‘when we speak of Thomism we do not want to do archeology; we
do not want to do history or philosophical erudition; we do not want to
practise a form of mental particularism’.57
In conclusion, during the 1925–33 years, the FUCI was characterised
by having a strong sense of a ‘fortress mentality’ when confronting the
modern world. Many in the association were highly critical of modernity
but, even then, they expressed a high degree of confidence, or triumpha-
lism, in the ideal of a rejuvenating and palingenetic form of Catholicism
that would brush aside the evils surrounding contemporary men and
women. It was a holistic, all-embracing form of Christianity, one that pre-
sented itself as the bastion of all ultimate truths. To be sure, the influence
of Jacques Maritain moderated this spirit to a certain degree, but it would
be a mistake to overstress this influence. After all, the French philosopher
only contributed a couple of articles to the FUCI press during the eight
years that the Montini-Righetti administration lasted. In other words,
the contribution of Jacques Maritain did not suffice to change the over-
whelming attitude to the modern world and modernity among the fucini.
It would be after 1933, as we shall see, that the Catholic intellectuals,
strongly influenced by Fascist visions of modernity, elaborated their own
project of an alternative modernity.
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.
5. M. Marcocchi, ‘G. B. Montini. Scritti Fucini (1925–1933): linee di let-

tura’ in Educazione, Intellettuali e Società in G. B. Montini- Paolo VI
(Brescia, 1992), 15–6.
6. M. C. Giuntella, La FUCI tra Modernismo, Partito Popolare e Fascismo
(Rome, 2000), 150.
7. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929–1937)
(Bologna, 1979), 86–93 and idem, ‘La FUCI di Giovanni Battista Montini’
in M. Mantovani and M. Toso (eds.), Paolo VI. Fede, cultura, università
(Rome, 2003), 41–58.
8. A. Acerbi, Chiesa, Cultura, Società. Momenti e figure dal Vaticano I a Paolo
VI (Milan, 1988), 207.
9. Fausto Montanari, ‘Umanesimo cristiano’, Azione fucina, 5 March 1933.
10. Giovanni Battista Montini, ‘Vocazione antica’, Studium, 5 (1929).
11. Mons. G. B. Montini, ‘Commenti alle cose’, L’Assistente ecclesiastico, April
1931.
12. See, for example, E. Gentile, Contro Cesare. Cristianesimo e totalitarismo
nell’epoca dei fascismi (Milan, 2010), 23–48; G. Verucci, La Chiesa cattol-
ica in Italia dall’Unità a oggi (Rome and Bari, 1999), 3–35 and
A.C. Jemolo, Chiesa e Stato in Italia. Dalla Unificazione agli anni settanta
(Turin, 1977), 3–79.
13. Vincenzo Arcozzi Masino, ‘Coscienza cattolica e vita moderna’, Studium,
5 (1928).
14. Ibid.
15. Mario Cordovani, ‘Gli Universitari Cattolici’, Studium, 10 (1927).

Cordovani (1883–1950) was a noted Dominican and official theologian
for the popes Pius XI and Pius XII between 1936 and 1950. He actively
collaborated with the FUCI during his lifetime, and his philosophical and
theological works proved to be extremely influential.
16. f.a., ‘Civiltà moderna’, Azione fucina, 17 October 1931.
17. G. B., ‘Aspetti del nostro tempo’, Azione fucina, 18 December 1932.
18. Guido Gonella (1905–1982) would become one of the leading figures of
the Christian Democrat Party after the Second World War. He was first
deputy and then senator. Additionally, he was minister of education
between 1946 and 1951. On Gonella see, for example, G. Dalla Torre Del
Tempio, Guido Gonella e le origini della Costituzione (Rome, 2010) and
G. Fanello Marcucci, Guido Gonella. Dal “discorso delle libertà” agli
“appunti sulle istituzioni” (Catanzaro, 2008).
19. Guido Gonella, ‘Cronache del Pensiero’, Studium, 6 (1928).
20. Guido Gonella, ‘Il genio del Cattolicismo e la modernità’, Studium, 12
(1929). In this article there is a clear influence of the French philosopher
and theologian Jacques Maritain and especially his book Three Reformers:
Luther, Descartes, Rousseau (1926). This monograph still pertains to the
26 J. DAGNINO
Maritain of Antimoderne. It was first translated and commented into

Italian in 1928 by Giovanni Battista Montini.
21. Ibid.
22. This vision contrasts sharply with the period after 1933, as will be shown,
where there was a true fascination with technology.
23. Guido Gonella, ‘Tecnica e Spirito’, Studium, 3 (1930).
24. Guido Gonella, ‘Profilo dell’anti-intellettualiatà’, Studium, 5 (1930).
25. Guido Gonella, ‘Il radicalismo’, Studium, 8 (1932).
26. g.b.m., ‘Criticismo’, Studium, 7–8 (1926).
27. Ibid., Gonella also had severe words for the spread of criticism in modern
society. In Gonella’s words, ‘the demon of criticism is the soul of modern
thought’. See Guido Gonella, ‘La critica e le sue malattie’, Studium, 6 (1930).
28. g.b.m., ‘Risurrezione’, La Sapienza, 1 April 1927.
29. G. B. Montini, ‘Per lo studio della Morale’, Studium, 2 (1929).
30. G. B. Montini, ‘Le idee di S. Paolo’, Studium, 2 (1931).
31. g.b.m., ‘Tradizione e Storicismo’, Studium, 7–8 (1927).
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. g.b.m., ‘Pensiero e vita religiosa’, Studium, 2 (1928).
35. Pius IX, Syllabus in Acción Católica Española, Colección de Encíclicas y
Cartas Pontificias (Buenos Aires, 1946), 88.
36. g.b.m., ‘Idee-Forze’, Studium, 7–8 (1928).
37. g.b.m., ‘la distanza dal mondo’, Azione fucina, 10 February 1929.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
40. Ibid.
41. G.B.M., ‘Unità di spirito’, Azione fucina, 1 March 1931.
42. O. Lacombe, ‘I giovani e il tomismo’, Azione fucina, 15 December 1929.
43. Mario Cordovani O. P., ‘Filosofia senza aggettivi’, Azione fucina, 21

August 1932.
44. Paolo Dezza S. J., ‘Attualità del Tomismo’, Azione fucina, 21 August 1932.
45. The bibliography on Maritain is unsurprisingly very extensive. See, for
example, L. Bonaparte and R. Papini (eds.), La democrazia internazionale.
Un’introduzione al pensiero politico di Jacques Maritain (Bologna, 2006);
J.-L. Barré, Jacques e Raissa Maritain. Da intellettuali anarichici a testi-
mony di Dio (Milan, 2000); G. Galeazzi, Jacques Maritain, un filosofo per il
nostro tempo (Milan, 1999); E. Sepe, Jacques Maritain e il mondo cattolico
italiano durante il fascismo (Florence, 1997); A. Scivoletto (ed.), Jacques
Maritain e le scienze sociali (Milan, 1984); B. Doering, Jacques Maritain
and the French Catholic Intellectuals (Notre Dame and London, 1983) and
R. Papini (ed.), Jacques Maritain e la società contemporanea (Milan, 1978).
46. See, for example, G. Campanini, ‘Gli influssi di J. Maritain su G.B. Montini-

Paolo VI. La questione della modernità’ in M. Mantovani and M. Toso,
Paolo VI, 87–95; Montini, Journet, Maritain: Une famille d’esprit (Brescia,
2000); G. Galeazzi (ed.), Montini e Maritain tra religione e cultura
(Vatican City, 2000) and P. Chenaux, Paul VI et Maritain. Les rapports du
“Montinianisme” et du “Maritanisme” (Brescia, 1994).
47. E. Sepe, Jacques Maritain, 30–1.
48. R. Moro and M. Papini, ‘L’influenza di Maritain nella formazione

dell’antifascismo degli Universitari a dei Laureati Cattolici’ in R. Papini
(ed.), Jacques Maritain, 207.
49. For Montini and Three Reformers see, for example, G. Campanini, ‘G. B.
Montini e J. Maritain dai Tre Riformatori a Umanesimo Integrale’ in Montini,
Journet, Maritain, 225–32 and P. Chenaux, Paul VI et Maritain, 25–33.
50. g.b.m. (Giovanni Battista Montini), ‘Prefazione’ in Jacques Maritain, Tre
Riformatori. Lutero, Cartesio, Rousseau (Brescia, 2001), 37.
51. Ibid.
52. Ibid., 38.
53. Giacomo Maritain, ‘Orientamento del pensiero cristiano’, Azione fucina,
18 January 1931.
54. Giacomo Maritain, ‘Intorno alla filosofia tomista’, Azione fucina, 9 March
1930.
55. Ibid.
56. Giacomo Maritain, ‘Attualità di San Tomaso’, Azione fucina, 5 March 1933.
57. g.b.m., ‘Il nostro tomismo’, Azione fucina, 6 March 1932.
CHAPTER 3
The Architecture of the City of God:

Politics and Society During
the Montini-Righetti Era
As demonstrated in the previous chapter, many fucini were highly criti-

cal of the modern world and modernity in general but at the same time
professed a totalising and regenerative form of Christianity. This form of
Catholicism was inevitably transported to the political realm, where the
motto of the day was to restore everything in Christ. This section, there-
fore, turns to considering the political nature of FUCI ideas during the
decade that followed the Fascist seizure of power.
The question of the fucini’s elaboration and thought with regard to the
subjects of politics and society between 1925 and 1933 is still a contested
one. For Renato Moro, during this period, Giovanni Battista Montini and
Igino Righetti, faced with the changed climate in Italian politics and with
a Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI) in crisis and an ever-growing understand-
ing between the Vatican and the Fascist regime, opted for a line of apoliti-
cal abstentionism, concentrating instead on its work of cultural diffusion
within the world of the universities.1 Massimo Marcocchi has similarly
argued that Montini was devoted to a spiritual pedagogy destined for the
education of the souls—a project void of any social or political dimen-
sion.2 Maria Cristina Giuntella also underlines the cultural and religious
tone that characterised the FUCI in the 1925–33 period, adding that for
many fucini the end of the PPI was a very traumatic experience in terms of
the rules of democracy and the growing identity of the laity.3 For his part,
Richard J. Wolff insists that during the Montini-Righetti administration

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_3
30 J. DAGNINO
the spirit of the PPI continued to be cultivated.4 Others, like Michele

Nicoletti, have gone even further claiming that the entire history of the
FUCI can be explained in terms of the movement’s search for democracy.
However, he does not specify what kind or concept of democracy he is
writing about.5
The Royalty of Christ the King and Its Enemies

In December 1925 Pius XI, in his encyclical Quas Primas, had established
the feast of Christ the King. The rule of Christ was not meant to be purely
spiritual but extended itself to terrestrial matters, over individuals and soci-
ety itself.6 As such, the feast of Christ the King had implicit political con-
notations in the sense of the ‘great politics’—as Pius XI liked to call it—in
opposition to party politics.7 In a speech to the fucini in March 1926,
the pope confirmed this viewpoint when he declared that Christ exercised
dominion over everything, be it individuals or society, and underscored
the eminently social nature of Christ’s dominion over mankind.8 The
Catholic intellectuals obediently followed the papal directives in this mat-
ter. The principle of Christ the King reflected, once again, the totalising
vision of Catholicism held by the fucini during these years applied, in this
case, to the political and social realms. The new feast implied the effort
of wholly Catholicising the social life of every nation, making Christianity
the guiding principle behind every political, legal, economic, and social
order. It meant putting Christ above all human powers and making him
the true source of all fecund authority and power, to see Christ as ‘the sole
and infinite regenerator of the world’.9 Only by following this path could
the powers of Christ in the legislative, judicial, and executive spheres reign
unconstrained. Furthermore, the powers of Christ could not be limited to
a single country, but should extend themselves to every nation, individual,
and collectivity, so that the final and grandiose reign of Christ the King on
earth could be enacted. In this totalising and confessional perspective on
politics and society the FUCI rejected any notion of separation of church
and state, as expressions of virulent anticlericalism that had to be removed
if the Kingdom of Christ was to be ever inaugurated on earth.10 The FUCI
was to be considered as the ‘intellectual avant-garde of Catholic Action’11
destined to play a pivotal role as an instrument in the Christianisation of
social life.
‘Politics’ within Catholic Action was, therefore, not to be under-
stood in the traditional sense of party politics. As Pius XI admonished
THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE CITY OF GOD: POLITICS AND SOCIETY... 31
niversity students, they had to refrain from participating in party politics

u
and respond to a higher calling by collaborating in the building of what
he termed ‘great politics’; that is, the collaboration towards the common
good of the body politic. Pius XI rejected party politics, because of its
particular objectives as opposed to the universal ones of the church, its fre-
quent internal struggles, and demagoguery, among other things.12 Taking
up the same theme, Giovanni Battista Montini urged the fucini to prac-
tise the good, true, and great politics taught by the supreme pontiff that
was directed at common good—to that ‘of the “polis”, the “civitas”, the
public good as “supreme lex”’, towards which every social activity should
be directed.13 According to Guido Gonella, political activities in which
Catholic Action could be legitimately involved were those when politics
touched or reached the altars. Gonella went on to say that the lay move-
ment of the Catholic Church could get involved in politics whenever the
religious and moral conscience of souls was involved, thus leaving much
more ample room for Catholic Action to intervene in politics than did
Montini.14
In this very elastic conception of politics it was not hard for the fucini
to find enemies, especially among liberals, socialists, and the League of
Nations. The last of these was viewed as a secular—if not avowedly anti-
clerical—competitor to the universal mission of the Catholic Church. To
make things worse, the church had not been invited to participate in its
constitution—something that reinforced the impression among millions
of Catholics that the League of Nations had been created as an alternative
and rival institution to the church. In the view of the fucino Nello Palmieri,
the League of Nations had the ‘hideous character of being a syndicate
of the victorious powers’15 of the First World War, more concerned with
keeping their territorial gains and the new balance of power than creating
a true atmosphere of peace among the nations. Moreover, according to
Palmieri, what was additionally disquieting about the League of Nations
was its philosophical and doctrinal underpinning. Palmieri had no doubt
that behind the international organisation lay the ideas and powers of the
freemasonry and Jews—the latter ‘international by temperament and by
system’.16 These were ideas and philosophies that were estranged from
Catholicism and endangered the realisation of the Kingdom of Christ on
earth.17
Liberals and socialists were just as despised as manifestations of that
secular, rationalistic, individualistic, and materialistic modernity that the
church had so frequently condemned as anathemas for the Catholic faith
32 J. DAGNINO
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
a Catholicism understood exclusively as the hierarchical order of pagan

Rome, deprived of its proper spiritual dimension. He was furthermore
depicted as a reactionary who accepted the state as the final goal in the
form of an aristocratic monarchy.21 For his part, the central ecclesiastical
assistant of the federation, Giovanni Battista Montini, spoke of the intrin-
sic religious immorality of Maurras’s movement, of its personalistic devia-
tions, and, more interestingly, of constituting a movement of exaggerated
nationalism that was ‘totalitarian and pagan’.22 Behind such comments
one can sense the nervousness of the FUCI about Mussolini’s similarly
statist ideas.
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
c ritical of what he deemed to be an erroneous conception of the just and

‘natural’ relationships between the individual and the state, whereby in
Fascist ideology there was an excessive subordination of the former to
the latter, and where the individual was appraised according to his con-
tribution to the nation, which was considered to be the final measure of
everything.27
Nevertheless, despite these contrasts with Catholic social teaching,
Luigi Civardi still found in the Carta del Lavoro some points of conver-
gence with the church’s teaching on societal matters. Not without some
slight contradiction, Civardi positively evaluated the Fascist document for
condemning liberal agnosticism, while affirming the need for state inter-
vention in trade union matters. He went on to praise the Labour Charter
for providing a concrete negation of the evil principle of class warfare
that socialism had made the core element of its ruinous revolutionary
action, while at the same time declaring the solidarity between the differ-
ent factors of production and the equality of the social classes.28 Similarly,
others—like Paolo Emilio Taviani, one of the leaders of the FUCI chap-
ter in Genoa—admitted in his memoirs that he was seduced by Fascism
because of its critique of capitalism and its corporativist ideology.29 These
ambiguities increased with the publication of Pius XI’s letter encyclical
Quadragesimo Anno, which appeared on 15 May 1931.30 Although the
pope warned of the possibility that in the nascent Fascist corporate order
the state might replace liberty of action and have an excessive bureau-
cratic and political dimension, he also praised the new order for abolish-
ing strikes, for favouring the peaceful collaboration between the different
social classes, and for repressing the socialist organisations among other
benefits of Fascist corporativism.31 As such, some in the FUCI, like the
Jesuit Angelo Brucculeri, saw in Fascism the fulfilment of the Catholic
ideal of corporativism.32 For Silvio Golzio too, Fascist corporativism rep-
resented an admirable and properly Italian product because of its critique
of the liberal conception of the state and economic individualism as well as
the novel political and social model propounded by the corporativist state.
Additionally, he was very impressed by the concept of nationhood implied
in the corporativist order, the nation as a living organism that transcended
the life of individuals, as well as the supposed freedom it gave individu-
als while maintaining a strong and healthy sense of authority, capable of
regenerating Italy and its people.33
The Legacy of the PPI and the Question

of Democracy
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,
reflected again the FUCI’s commitment to the papacy, as the arbiter of

Italian Catholic politics. Pius XI himself had prohibited in 1924 any pos-
sible alliance between Catholics and Socialists in Italy as contrary to the
teachings of the church.44
As has been explained, during the first years of the Montini-Righetti
tenure of power there were some fucini with ties to the PPI—numbers
that, however, tended to decrease with the passing of time. In 1926, the
archbishop of Florence wrote to Montini complaining how in his diocese
there were still some ‘recalcitrant’ members of the association who resisted
following the programme traced by Pius XI for the FUCI and how they
were still accustomed to ‘consider the PPI and democracy as the unum
neccesarium and now believe there is nothing left for them to do’.45 In
February 1926 Montini endured an embarrassing moment, when some
fucini sent a letter of support to Luigi Sturzo, causing him trouble in
Vatican circles. He personally wrote to Mgr. Pizzardo explaining the situ-
ation and stating that it did not reflect the official stance of the Catholic
intellectuals’ federation. Instead, the letter had been composed by some
individual FUCI members at the time of the national congress held in
Bologna in September of 1925. The ecclesiastical assistant went even fur-
ther in his explanation, writing to the cardinal that at the congress ‘there
were more pro-fascist nuances than pro-popolari’.46 Indeed, by 1929 over
50 % of the fucini were also members of the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti
(GUF), or Fascist University Groups.47
There were some reports that pointed to this reality. For example, a
report from 1933 from Milan said ‘that it was not true that the fucini of
Milan are antifascist. It is a fact that at least 95 % of them are members
of the Fascio.’48 Another student from Acireale informed Igino Righetti
that all the members of the secretariat were members of the GUF while
doing their best to keep their identity as fucini.49 The situation in the
female branch in Acireale was reported to be even more dramatic, with
the regent of the local branch and some members of the secretariat having
signed a declaration by which they resigned from Catholic Action alto-
gether and expressed their desire to belong only to the ranks of the Fascist
National Party.50 In Padova too, in 1927 all the first-year undergraduates
were members of the GUF.51 Of course it is very difficult—if not impossi-
ble—to gauge the reasons behind the decisions of many fucini to join the
ranks of the GUF. But, surely, they must have ranged from fear and sheer
opportunism to a sincere belief in the compatibility between Catholicism
and Fascism, or at least some aspects of it. So, for many jobs in the public
38 J. DAGNINO
sector, it was a pre-requisite to be a member of the Fascist Party. On the

other hand, one should not neglect the power of the political socialisation
of youth carried out by the regime, socialisation to which the fucini were
certainly not immune.
In the face of this alarming situation, both Montini and Righetti tried
to impose some measures to prevent the trend from escalating. Righetti
was firmly convinced of the necessity of avoiding the infiltration of ‘politi-
cal elements’ among the leaders of the association and of trying to con-
vince the Catholic intellectuals not to become members of the GUF. For
his part, Montini advocated that the new members of the FUCI should
take an oath of loyalty to the organisation.52
Thus, whatever the more fluid reality of the FUCI groups at a local
level, the national leadership of the movement was keen to retain the
organisational autonomy of the movement within Fascist Italy. This did
not, however, imply a spirit of anti-Fascist resistance, or still less support
for a democratic political order. Above all, the Catholic intellectuals’ asso-
ciation emphasised a social definition of democracy, not a strictly party
political one. They principally referred to Giuseppe Toniolo’s definition of
democracy as the perfect explanation of what ought to be understood by
Christian democracy. Toniolo had defined democracy as ‘that civil order
in which all the social forces, juridical and economic, in the plenitude
of their hierarchical development, proportionately cooperate to the com-
mon good … with the end result of contributing to the advantage of the
inferior classes’.53 According to Giovanni Battista’s brother, this defini-
tion provided the true essence and foundations of Christian democracy
properly understood. Moreover, democracy formulated by Toniolo was
equivalent to democracy sanctioned and blessed by the church.54 Christian
democracy thus understood was above all a religious and spiritual concept,
as well as a social and moralising action to lift up the poorest sections of
society. Along similar lines, Vincenzo Arcozzi Masino wrote in Studium
in 1929 that the essence of Christian democracy lay in the action of the
state and society towards the common good, in particular with regard to
the most deprived sectors of society. He explicitly insisted that “democ-
racy” was here used in a social and non-political sense.55 Furthermore, this
notion of Christian democracy did not at all imply a government based on
popular sovereignty.56 Christian democracy did not aim at transforming or
abolishing the hierarchical constitution of the diverse social classes pres-
ent in society. Indeed, in this organic and somewhat aristocratic and elitist
societal vision, social differences were considered to be the basis of social
life.57 Giovanni Battista Montini also shared, to some extent, a paternalis-

tic version of democracy. He distinguished between a democratic regime
and democracy, the latter understood ‘in the sense of the material and
spiritual uplifting of the people and of moralising public life: in this sense
… a Christian cannot be but a democrat’.58
In the light of these statements, it would seem somewhat far-fetched
to speak of the FUCI during the 1925–1933 period as an exponent
of Christian democracy, unless we use the term in a very elastic sense.
Instead, the FUCI articulated a social and spiritual conception of democ-
racy that cannot be compared to the Partito Popolare Italiano or to other
Christian Democrat experiments being carried out on the continent at
the same time, like, for example, the French Parti Démocrate Populaire.
Above all, the FUCI lacked a political party dimension. It never put for-
ward a concrete and detailed political programme. Nor did it discuss in its
press subjects such as the pluralism of political parties, universal suffrage,
the secular state and the separation of powers, to name but a few of the
traditional concerns of political parties. The FUCI was concerned with
‘great politics’, that is the politics that touched the altars, and its version of
Christian democracy was eminently social in nature, with some elements
of organicism, elitism, and paternalism.
Notes
(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.
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
di Cristo Re’ in A. Melloni (ed.), Cristianesimo nella storia. Saggi in onore

di Giuseppe Alberigo (Bologna, 1996), 607–56.
8. Pio XI, Discorsi agli universitari (Rome, 1932), 13.
9. Cesidio Lolli, ‘La regalità di Cristo e gli Stati’, Studium, 7–8 (1926).
10. See, for example, Adriano Bernareggi, ‘Chiesa e Stato’, Studium, 8–9
(1929) and Fucinus monens, ‘Stato e Chiesa’, Studium, 7 (1930) who
blamed the theory of the separation of church and state on the ‘liberal
instincts of positivism’.
11. Augusto Ciriaci, ‘Il quarantesimo della “Rerum Novarum”’, Studium, 5–6
(1931).
12. Pio XI, Discorsi, 5.
13. g.b.m., ‘Rassegne’, Studium, 1 (1928).
14. Guido Gonella, ‘Azione Cattolica e Politica’, Studium, 7–8 (1931). See
also, Giuseppe Olivero, ‘La potestà indiretta della Chiesa nell’ordine tem-
porale’, Azione fucina, 28 July 1929.
15. Nello Palmieri, ‘I Cattolici e la Società delle Nazioni’, Studium, 4 (1927).
16. Ibid.
17. The young Giovanni Battista Montini had also disapproved of the League
of Nations as an entity ‘that had failed before it even began to live’. See
b.m. (Battista Montini), ‘Per il 29 Giugno: Petro Salutem’, La Fionda, 21
June 1919.
18. Silvio Golzio, ‘Il concetto di ordine morale nella vita economica contem-
poranea’, Studium, 1 (1933).
19. P. A. Vermeersch, S.I., ‘L’attualità dell’Enciclica’, Studium, 5–6 (1931).
20. Guido Gonella, ‘Cronache del Pensiero’, Studium, 7 (1928).
21. Ibid.
22. g.b.m., ‘Bibliografia’, Studium, 6–7 (1929).
23. Carmelo Scalia, ‘La teoria del giusto salario’, Studium, 1 (1927).
24. Giuseppe Olivero, ‘Problemi del lavoro’, Studium, 7 (1928).
25. For Fascist versions of corporativism see, for example, G. Santomassimo,
La terza via fascista. Il mito del corporativismo (Rome, 2006); D. Baker,
‘The Political Economy of Fascism. Myth or Reality. Or Myth and Reality?’,
New Political Economy, 11/2 (2006), 227–50; F. Cordova, Verso lo stato
totalitario. Sindacati, società e fascismo (Soveria Mannelli, 2005) and P. G.
Zunino, L’ideologia del fascismo. Miti, credenze e valori nella stabilizzazione
del regime (Bologna, 1995), 245ff.
26. Luigi Civardi, ‘La Carta del Lavoro’, Studium, 6 (1927). Luigi Civardi
(1886–1971) was ordained in 1911. He was above all noted for his active
participation in Catholic Action and for his book Manuale di Azione
Cattolica, which had several editions and was translated into several lan-
guages. He was in charge of teaching the principles of Catholic Action at
the diocesan seminaries. Additionally, Pius XI designated him as editor of
the official periodical Bollettino ufficiale dell’Azione Cattolica Italiana. In

1962 he was appointed bishop of Tespia.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. P. E. Taviani, Politica a memoria d’uomo (Bologna, 2002), 24. For
Taviani’s economic thought see S. Bartolozzi Batignani, Dai Progetti
Cristiano-Sociali alla Costituente. Il pensiero economico di Paolo Emilio
Taviani (1932–1946) (Florence, 1985).
30. Strikingly, the FUCI press did not pay attention to this papal document,
devoting its attention itself to the 40th anniversary of Rerum Novarum.
This was probably due to the fact that Quadragesimo Anno was published
in the midst of the crisis of 1931 and so it is highly likely that the fucini
wanted to avoid further problems with the Fascist regime.
31. Acción Católica Española, Colección de Encíclicas, 484–85.
32. P. A. Brucculeri, S. I, ‘Il contenuto dottrinale’, Studium, 5–6 (1931). The
Jesuit Angelo Brucculeri (1879–1969) was ordained in 1911. He was a
military chaplain in the First World War. After the conflict he became a
frequent collaborator of Civiltà Cattolica, a collaboration that lasted over
40 years, period during which he mostly wrote about the social teachings
of the Church. After the fall of Fascism, he favoured the adoption of a
democratic system of government for the peninsula. However, during the
1950s he became closer to the attitudes and options upheld by the conser-
vative right.
33. Silvio Golzio, ‘Lo Stato e la dottrina corporativa’, Studium, 5–6 (1932).
34. M. C. Giuntella, La FUCI, 136; R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce, 14–5
and G. Fanello Marcucci, Storia della Federazione Universitaria Cattolica
Italian (Rome, 1971), 117ff.
35. For studies dealing with Luigi Sturzo and the PPI see, for example,

G. Fanello Marcucci, Luigi Sturzo. Vita e battaglie per la libertà del fonda-
tore del Partito popolare italiano (Milan, 2004); G. Campanini, Il pensiero
politico di Luigi Sturzo (Rome, 2001); G. Vecchio, Luigi Sturzo. Il prete che
portó I cattolici alla politica (Milan, 1997); F. Malgeri, Luigi Sturzo (Milan,
1993); J.N. Molony, The emergence of political Catholicism in Italy: the
Partito popolare 1919–1926 (London, 1977); G. De Rosa, Luigi Sturzo
(Turin, 1977) and idem, Il Partito popolare italiano (Rome and Bari,
1966).
36. Battista Montini, ‘La nostra politica’, La Fionda, 3 September 1919.
37. R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce, 17.
38. G. B. Montini, Scritti giovanili (Brescia, 1979), 17. This corresponds to a
writing of May 1917.
39. See for example, the letter to his family dated 18 May 1921 in G. B.
Montini, Lettere ai familiari 1919–1943, i (Brescia, 1986), 72.
42 J. DAGNINO
0. Letter to his family, 16 April 1923, in ibid., 199.

4
41. Letter to his father, 15 July 1923, in ibid., 230–31.
42. Ibid., 231.
43. B. M, ‘Alle Sorgenti’, La Fionda, 21 March 1919.
44. Pio XI, Discorsi, 6–7.
45. Letter to Montini, 23 December 1926, in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b.‘Assistenti 1925–40’.
46. Montini to Mgr. Pizzardo, 1 February 1926, in Archivio della Presidenza
della FUCI, b.‘Rapporti con GIAC e GUF’. Giuseppe Pizzardo
(1877–1970) exercised an enormous power during the years under study
in Catholic Action in his role as central ecclesiastical assistant of the organ-
isation. In 1937 he was elevated to the cardinalate. Between 1951 and
1959 he served as secretary of the Holy Office and between 1939 and
1968 he was the prefect of the Congregation for Seminaries and
Universities.
47. R. Moro, La formazione della classe dirigente, 81. On the GUF see, for
example, S. Duranti, Lo Spirito Gregario. I gruppi universitari fascisti tra
politica e propaganda (1930–1940) (Rome, 2008); L. La Rovere, Storia dei
GUF. Organizzazione, politica e miti della gioventù universitaria fascista,
1919–1943 (Turin, 2003); G. Iannacone, Giovinezza e modernità reazion-
aria. Letteratura e politica nelle riviste dei GUF (Naples, 2002); M. C.
Giuntella, Autonomia e nazionalizzazione dell’università. Il fascismo e
l’inquadramento degli atenei (Rome, 1992), 125–70 and T. H. Koon,
Believe, Obey, Fight. Political Socialization of Youth in Fascist Italy,
1922–1943 (Chapel Hill and London, 1985), 240ff.
48. Anonymous fucino to Righetti, in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI,
b.‘Presidenza Righetti’.
49. Anonymous fucino to Righetti, 31 July 1931, in ibid.
50. Anonymous fucino from Catania to Righetti, 21 September 1931, in ibid.
51. Session of the Federal meeting at Siena, 1 May 1927, in ibid.
52. Records of the meeting of the Supreme Council of the FUCI, 1 November
1930, in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b.‘Cons. Sup. Verbali
1926/40’.
53. Cited in Lodovico Montini, ‘La democrazia di G. Toniolo’, Studium, 4
(1928). Giuseppe Toniolo (1845–1918), Professor at the University of
Pisa from 1879 to 1917, was one of the founders of the new currents of
Italian Catholic sociology and economics. He also played a prominent role
in the Catholic movement of the period. In 1889 he founded the Unione
cattolica per gli studi sociali, an important centre for the study, develop-
ment and diffusion of the social sciences among Catholic intellectuals. On
Toniolo see, for example, G. Pecorari, Alle origini dell’anticapitalismo cat-
tolico. Due saggi e un bilancio storiografico su Giuseppe Toniolo (Milan,
2010); F. Manzalini, Elementi di economia politica in Giuseppe Toniolo

(Siena, 2009) and R. Molesti (ed.), Giuseppe Toniolo. Il pensiero e l’opera
(Milan, 2005).
54. Ibid.
55. Vincenzo Arcozzi Masino, ‘La Rerum Novarum e la democrazia cristiana’,
Studium, 5 (1929).
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. g.b.m., ‘Bibliografia’, Studium, 6–7 (1929).
CHAPTER 4
The FUCI and Fascism, 1925–33
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

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_4
46 J. DAGNINO
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
From the Lateran Pacts to the Crisis of 1931
While the intellectuals of Catholic Action were experiencing a tough time

at the hands of the GUF, the Vatican authorities and the Fascist gov-
ernment were negotiating what would turn out to be the Lateran Pacts.
When King Victor Emmanuel appointed Mussolini as prime minister in
1922, the Vatican soon opened communication with il Duce by means of
the Jesuit Father Pietro Tacchi Venturi. Mussolini, being the realist and
clever political tactician that he was, rapidly saw the benefits his govern-
ment could derive should it resolve the Roman Question. He had his chil-
dren baptised in 1923 and then regularised his family status by a religious
marriage with his wife Rachele. Additionally, he outlawed Freemasonry
and exempted the clergy from taxation—all measures that could only have
pleased Pius XI. Moreover, the Fascists restored Catholic instruction in
public schools, recognised the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in
Milan, as well as restoring a number of religious houses and exempting
the clergy from compulsory military service. The Vatican was pleased that
Catholic schools were granted parity with public ones and the fact that the
government was of tremendous help in the rescue of the Vatican-owned
Bank of Rome, which was on the verge of financial collapse, could only
have delighted the pope.6
For its part the Vatican, in early 1924, forbade the clergy—be it sec-
ular or regular—from belonging to political parties, while at the same
time calling for the complete separation of Catholic Action from politi-
cal Catholicism. In practice this meant the beginning of the end for the
Partito Popolare Italiano whose leader, Luigi Sturzo, had already resigned
as secretary of the party in 1923 and had left for exile in London.
THE FUCI AND FASCISM, 1925–33 47
In a speech of December 1925, Pius XI paid tribute to the manner in

which the Italian authorities had facilitated the visits of pilgrims from all
over the world to Rome during the year of Jubilee. He repeated his posi-
tive tone the following year, after an assassination attempt on Mussolini
when the pope asked that all good Catholics prayed for the protection of
the man whose life was so precious to all Italians.7
Finally, on 11 February 1929, after three years of intense negotiations,
the Lateran Pacts were signed. These included three accords: a treaty that
put an end to the Roman Question and declared Vatican City to be neutral
and inviolable territory; a concordat, which regulated Church and State
relations in Italy; and, finally, a financial convention through which the
Italian state paid a substantial amount of money as a means to provide
compensation for the papal territory annexed during the national unifica-
tion process of the mid-nineteenth century.8 The concordat was by far the
most important of these legal texts for the Vatican and the diverse Catholic
movements active in Italy. Arguably, the most significant article of the
concordat was Article 43, by which the Italian state recognised the activi-
ties of Catholic Action, in so far as it remained aloof from every political
party, which was something of a vain statement given that Italy had been
a one-party state since 1926.
The Lateran Pacts were a ‘marriage of convenience’ whereby both sides
gained something. The Catholic Church obtained, especially through the
concordat, a strong presence in Italian civil society, whereas Mussolini’s
administration attained high levels of national and international prestige.
But conflicts between the two sides were soon to follow. Il Duce was the
first to trigger off the conflict in his speech to the Chamber of Deputies
on 13 May 1929, in which he insisted on the specifically Italian character
of Catholicism and the intransigence of the totalitarian state in demanding
an educational monopoly over the new generations. Had Christianity not
settled in Rome, the head of government insisted, ‘it would very probably
had been one of so many sects that flourished in those times … and prob-
ably would have disappeared, without leaving a trace of itself’.9 Il Duce
continued by declaring that under ‘the authority of the State the Church
is not sovereign, it is not even free’, and spoke challengingly of the need
to give to youth ‘the sense of virility, of power, of conquest’.10 He finished
his speech by saying that ‘the Fascist State … is Catholic, but it is above
all, exclusively, essentially Fascist’.11 Pius XI reacted immediately and on
15 May, declaring in a speech that the state was not an entity that existed
‘to absorb … to annihilate the individual and the family’.12
48 J. DAGNINO
It was in this atmosphere of mutual mistrust and continual tension that

the crisis over the youth groups of Catholic Action broke out in 1931.13 At
the heart of the crisis lay the government’s goal of fascistising the world of
the universities, in order to create a new ruling class that would be ‘inte-
grally’ Fascist. Nevertheless, there was a deeply-embedded feeling among
the Fascist hierarchy that they were failing in their political socialisation of
youth, and were not fulfilling their programme of cultural and pedagogical
monopoly.14 Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, what was dis-
quieting and irritating for Mussolini’s regime was the Catholic world’s
interpretations of the Lateran Accords. Indeed, the dynamism displayed
by Catholic Action, its energetic activities to spread its message among
the Italian masses, its growth in numbers accompanied by a triumphalistic
sense that they were re-Catholicising the peninsula through its urge ‘to
invade, to explore, to impose’,15 upset and worried the Fascist authorities.
These attitudes were also very much present among the FUCI. In a
defiant response to Fascist exclusivist claims to Romanness, the fucino
Guido Gonella affirmed in April 1929 that ‘today only we Catholics can
call ourselves truly Romans’.16 Similarly, Igino Righetti, writing to Angela
Gotelli, the president of the female branch of the FUCI at the time, on 14
February 1929 expressed how the historical agreements between Church
and State had been received by him ‘with an exultant joy’.17
What underlay such statements was the widespread sense, among the
Catholic intellectuals, that the Lateran Pacts—and especially the concor-
dat—were a great triumph for the cause of Catholicism in the country and
provided a historical opportunity to reaffirm the primacy of the spiritual
over the material and secularising forces. In this sense the conclusion of
the pacts was perceived as an event that had far wider implications than
merely bringing an end to the by then old and rather annoying Roman
Question. This was the point of view expressed by an ecclesiastical assis-
tant of the federation, Adriano Bernareggi, for whom ‘the concordat can-
not be considered as a point of arrival but as a point of departure’ and
who added, more significantly, ‘as Italy has been remade Catholic, it is
now necessary to remake Catholic the souls of Italians’.18 The Lateran
Pacts encouraged this form of mentality, characterised by a vision of a new
opportunity for the rebirth of Catholicism in Italy. In a prominent arti-
cle in Studium, in which Mussolini’s name was not even mentioned, the
Lateran Pacts were presented as a personal triumph of Pius XI. Moreover,
the accords were perceived as the defeat of anticlericalism, and, tellingly,
the article proclaimed that the pacts would not be upheld by mere legal
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
Thus, for Scorza, the Catholic Church became a precursor of Fascism.

Pius XI reacted to these statements and particularly to Giurati’s speech
in a public letter directed to the cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Ildefonso
Schuster, dated 26 April 1931, and which was published on the front
page of Azione fucina of 3 May 1931. The pope reminded the govern-
ment that it was its duty to follow the teachings of the church in the reli-
gious education of youth and to facilitate its practice, and criticised it for
impeding this exercise through manifestations of hatred and irreverence.
Pius continued by introducing his famous distinction between ‘subjective
totalitarianism’ and ‘objective totalitarianism’. The Fascist regime could
be, the pope argued, defined as an example of the former, in the sense that
in the sphere of all that legitimately belonged to the state, all of its subjects
should fully obey the regime. Pius XI understood, however, something
very different by ‘objective totalitarianism’. In the mind of the supreme
pontiff, this concept implied everything that was needed for the totality
of the citizens, in their domestic lives, individual existence, spiritual and
supernatural dimensions. In this sense, only the Catholic Church could
claim to be truly totalitarian.26
In the meantime, Mussolini’s government had at the end of March
of 1931 suspended the FUCI meetings for political reasons that were
to take place at Pavia and Ferrara.27 Igino Righetti wrote a memoran-
dum responding to these suspensions and explaining that they were just
an excuse, ‘a pretext … to attack Catholic Action’.28 In the face of the
aggravating situation the FUCI decided to suspend the meetings they had
scheduled in Catania and Viterbo for the end of April, adding, however,
that ‘we are convinced that everything we try to promote in the student
field loyally respects the limits placed on the sphere of action of Catholic
Action; it is justified by a long tradition of activity of which not only do we
have nothing to hide but, on the contrary, much to be proud of’.29
The crisis escalated, with some fucini suffering physical attacks
from the gufini. In Milan, for example, in the midst of the crisis sev-
eral Catholic students were the victims of the anger of Fascist students.
Some were robbed of their FUCI badges and punched in the face. Bruno
Dedè, the vice president of the Milanese branch, was attacked twice and
received severe injuries, and was bleeding from his mouth.30 The FUCI
branch in Rome also experienced troubling times during these months.
Particularly worrying were the declarations of the secretary of Rome’s
GUF, according to whom ‘the moment of battle was near … I am also a
Catholic … but I cannot tolerate those who intend to monopolise that
religion, I cannot bear those who declare themselves to be Catholic only

if you are a member of a given association’.31
In the midst of this predicament, the leadership of the Catholic stu-
dents’ organisation was received in an audience by Pius XI on 18 May.
During the meeting, the leaders of the FUCI denounced in a detailed
fashion the obstruction and incidents of violence they had suffered at
the hands of the Fascists. The pope confirmed his firm opposition to any
threat of dissolving the federation, and an account of the main points
raised during the audience appeared with great prominence in the pages
of L’Osservatore Romano.32 However, this meeting did not help in dif-
fusing the growth of the crisis and the situation came to a breaking point
when the papal nuncio delivered a formal protest to the Italian govern-
ment regarding the violence to which the groups of Catholic Action were
still being subjected. This did nothing to help the Catholic movement,
since on 29 May the government dissolved the branches of the Gioventù
Cattolica (Catholic Youth) and those of the FUCI.33 The Vatican, worried
about the danger of imminent arrests, invited the leaders of the FUCI and
of Catholic Youth to Vatican City.34
In the meantime, Pope Pius XI reacted by publishing the well-known
encyclical Non Abbiamo Bisogno, dated 29 June 1931. While the docu-
ment was far from being a wholesome condemnation of the Fascist regime
as such, it did address the main points that had provoked the 1931 crisis.
It vehemently denied that most of the leaders of Catholic Action had a
popolare past, pointing out that out of 250 Diocesan Boards, 4000 sec-
tions of Catholic Men, and more than 5000 branches of Catholic Youth
they had only found four leaders who had belonged to the Popular Party.35
He concluded by stating that the clash over Catholic Action was merely an
excuse and the real driving force of the Fascist campaign was the intent to
monopolise the youth from its earliest stages to the exclusive advantage of
an ideology and party that at its root preached state worship.36
The Fascist camp in general, and the younger generation in particular,
reacted furiously to the papal document. Berto Ricci, for example, criti-
cised the encyclical and, more, broadly the modern papacy. The Florentine
Fascist intellectual disparaged what he perceived as the ‘spiritual weak-
ening of the Church of Rome’ and its clergy, described as an ‘army of
employees in frocks, irremediably suffering from bourgeois evil’37—in sum
a church more immersed and interested in material and terrestrial con-
cerns than in its original spiritual mission.
52 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
problems of modernity and of mass society, and finally elaborating an alter-

native form of Catholic modernity. With regard to the restrictions imposed
upon the FUCI through the September Accords, the subordination to the
diocesan authorities was never really put into full practice. The Catholic
students’ federation was still able to hold their annual national congresses
without too many problems and, thus, their cultural programmes on a
nation-wide level. Hence, the consequences of the crisis of 1931 should
not be overstated, since the 1930s would prove to be a very fertile cultural
decade for the Catholic intellectuals’ organisation. However, before that
occurred, the FUCI also experienced a crisis of its own, provoked by the
departure of Montini from his former leading role in the organisation.
Giovanni Battista Montini, Fascism, and His

Departure from the FUCI
Montini’s attitude towards Fascism certainly had its origins in his upbring-
ing, particularly in his relationship with his father Giorgio—a noted fig-
ure in the Catholic Brescian movement and one of the founders of the
Partito Popolare Italiano.43 Another influence on his future outlook on
Fascism was his membership of the group of young men who founded the
periodical La Fionda. This movement espoused a particular type of early
anti-Fascism, more of a religious and moral nature than of a political tone.
La Fionda decried in the nascent Fascist movement above all its supposed
Freemasonic anticlericalism, its violent methods, its social conservatism,
and its pretence to monopolise the idea of nationhood.44
This rather disdainful attitude to the populism of Mussolini and his
movement remained at the heart of his attitude to Fascism after 1922. At
first, however, he appeared circumspect in his comments on the political
changes taking place in Italy. Writing to his father from Warsaw in July
1923, he chiefly expressed his concern about the PPI and the political situ-
ation in Italy, manisfesting the view that the latter ‘has been worsened by
the Fascist obsession to transform into a partisan dictatorship its own vic-
tory, that could have been a national victory’.45 Once again from Warsaw,
Montini wrote at the beginning of September 1923 of his concern about
the political evolution of Italian society and how Fascism was a separatist
and partisan movement that did not take into account the common good
of the nation: ‘From abroad Italy clearly shows the fundamental error of
its internal politics: to conceive the nation as a party … to want to restore
54 J. DAGNINO
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
In an article written for Azione fucina, the ecclesiastical assistant warned

the Catholic world against adopting a too optimistic outlook after the
Lateran Pacts, an optimism based more on external and legal factors rather
than on the inner spiritual forces of the Catholic religion. More impor-
tantly, perhaps, he questioned whether there was a reason for the existence
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
Montini seems to be speaking of a nineteenth-century type of national-

ist movement, without grasping the revolutionary character and modern
dynamics implicit in Fascism’s version of nationalism, which had little in
common with the old type of Italian nationalism that often cherished tra-
dition, the monarchy, and the church.54
Montini had only a vague notion of the concept of revolution and,
naturally, rejected it in the name of tradition:
We need to reconcile ourselves with Tradition. There is the need, to go

forward, to reach out to this forgotten legacy … we have abolished our
dynastic nobility…we have lost our best spiritual legacy … her and her medi-
eval faith … we have felt modern … we need to defend ourselves from
the utopia that the novelty sought for can be reached through revolution,
instead of renovation, that is, through a love that is faithful to the past in
that which was worthy, in that which was great. There is a need for defend-
ing human solidarity and common sense, its natural aspirations, its universal
hopes against the bizarre and foolish ambitions of the anarchists, subjectiv-
ists, misanthropes and the lovers of paradox.55
As this article indicated, Montini’s attitude to Fascism was rooted primar-

ily in the past. He lacked any clear perspective on the profound innovation
that Fascism had introduced as a totalitarian experiment—an alternative
modernity—let alone as a political religion, even though this was grasped
clearly by some other Catholics of the period such as, for example, Luigi
Sturzo.56
Giovanni Battista Montini resigned from his post as central ecclesiasti-
cal assistant of the FUCI in early March 1933. The official reason given for
his decision was the increased workload he had at the Vatican Secretariat
of State and at the FUCI, which left him with no time to fulfil both jobs
satisfactorily,57 a version sustained by some historians of the association.58
The historical truth, however, was far more complicated, since Montini
was in fact forced to resign from his post at the FUCI.59
Already in May 1932, Giovanni Battista Montini, in a letter to his par-
ents, had complained about his work at the FUCI and how it ‘had been
censured by my Superiors … all the spiritual and cultural orientation of
my work has been affected’.60 Indeed, the cardinal vicar of Rome, the
strongly traditionalist Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, had harshly criti-
cised an Easter celebration prepared by Montini for the FUCI. According
to the cardinal, the celebration left the impression of being influenced by
Protestant elements, and of being in some respects offensive to Catholic

piety. The ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI was accused of privileging
liturgical education over the traditional forms of devotion, such as the
rosary, the devotion to the Sacred Heart and the Via Crucis, among others.
In these years liturgical education was viewed with suspicion in some
quarters of the Catholic Church, especially in its most conservative seg-
ments. Particularly in Rome, the relationships between the local chapter of
the FUCI and the Jesuits had been greatly strained since at least after the
Great War. The contrasts were especially sharp between the local FUCI
and some Jesuit youth organisations such as the Marian Congregations
and the Institute of Superior Religious Culture for Lay People at the
Gregorian University. The motives for these divergences lay mainly in the
diverse pedagogical methods utilised by the Jesuits and the fucini, the for-
mer more traditional and the latter more open to the religious innovations
of the day. Underlying such liturgical disputes, there lay, however, institu-
tional rivalries, which reflected the ambition of the Jesuits of absorbing the
Catholic university students in the Marian Congregations. The FUCI’s
predicament worsened with the nomination in 1931 as vicar of Rome of
the already-mentioned cardinal Francesco Marchetti Selvaggiani, a man
with strong philo-Jesuit inclinations. In 1932, Marchetti Selvaggiani nom-
inated as ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI Roman chapter Mgr. Roberto
Ronca. The new assistant and his religious orientation precipitated a crisis
in the Roman branch of the students’ association, with some members
leaving the chapter. The fucini criticised Ronca for privileging sentimental
and devotional aspects of religious life over cultural ones and for adopting
authoritarian methods of leadership.61 What upset Ronca—and by exten-
sion Marchetti Selvaggiani—was the intellectual rigour that Montini and
Righetti tried to give to the fucini’s religious formation. In an audience
with Mgr. Giuseppe Pizzardo, central ecclesiastical assistant for Catholic
Action Igino Righetti commented how Pizzardo had ordered the FUCI
to undertake ‘more common forms of piety and a less elevated form of
teaching’.62 In other words, the Catholic intellectuals’ federation was
being strongly criticised for its alleged intellectualism, elitism, and abstract
approach to religious life.
For his part, Giovanni Battista Montini, in a letter to the bishop of his
home town of Brescia, Giacinto Gaggia, dated 19 March 1933, laid out
in detail the reasons for his unwilling departure from the FUCI. In the
missive he accused the Company of Jesus of suffering from a true state
of panic and paranoia, which led them ‘to suspect plots against them’
58 J. DAGNINO
everywhere; at the same time, he charged them with arrogance due to

the very good prestige they had ‘in the Roman Curia’.63 Montini fur-
ther complained how some depicted him to Marchetti Selvaggiani as
anti-Jesuit and thus as a ‘person to be observed in every attitude, be it
practical or doctrinal, … the insinuation was sufficient to make me lose
the trust of the cardinal … he is extraordinarily well disposed towards the
Jesuit Fathers’.64 Montini tried to defend himself personally in front of
the vicar of Rome, claiming that the accusations lacked any real proof but
found that Marchetti Selvaggiani was not willing to change his stance and,
furthermore, displayed ‘an invincible aversion towards my work and my
post’.65 The ecclesiastical assistant of the FUCI believed that the vicar of
Rome wanted to abolish Catholic Action entirely, all to the advantage to
the Jesuit groups.66
Confronted by the hostility of Marchetti Selvaggiani, Montini’s predic-
ament escalated to the point that he was called to a meeting with Cardinal
Secretary of State Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII. Although
Pacelli lavished on him ‘paternal praise’ for his work among the Catholic
university students, Montini soon understood that Pacelli in reality would
‘willingly see me removed from the activities of Catholic Action’.67 Given
this lack of support, Montini told Gaggia that he was left with no other
option than to present his resignation from his post at the FUCI.
With Montini’s forced departure, one era had ended for the FUCI and
a new one was about to commence, one that would prove to be full of
exciting new challenges for the fucini, in the religious, cultural, and politi-
cal spheres, and that would culminate in the elaboration of an alternative
version of a Catholic form of modernity.
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
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.
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
noche transfigurada. Biografía de Pablo VI (Madrid, 2002), 253–59;

P. Hebblethwaite, Paul VI. The First Modern Pope (New York, 1993),
114–17; R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce, 166–71 and R. Moro, La
formazione della classe dirigente cattolica, 220–27. In a letter to the local
presidents of the association Igino Righetti commented how the announce-
ment of Montini’s forced resignation had surprised him and left ‘us with a
painful feeling’. Letter dated 7 March 1933 in Archivio della Presidenza
della FUCI, b. ‘Presidenza Righetti’.
60. G. B. Montini, Lettere ai familiari, 15 May 1932, 726.
61. On Roberto Ronca, see A. Riccardi, Il “partito romano” nel secondo

dopoguerra (1945–1954) (Brescia, 1983), 10ff.
62. Igino Righetti to Angela Gotelli, 11 May 1932 in N. Antonetti (ed.), La
FUCI di Montini e di Righetti, 308.
63. A. Fappani and F. Molinari, Giovannibattista Montini giovane, 285. The
complete text of the letter can be found in this book, 285–92.
64. Ibid.
65. Ibid., 287.
66. Ibid.
67. Ibid., 289.
PART 2
The FUCI 1933–39

CHAPTER 5
A Path to Modernity: The Fuci in the 1930s
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

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_5
66 J. DAGNINO
relations of Catholic associations with the Fascist government, the role

of the FUCI as a centre of religious formation for the university students
was considered by many problematic and even superfluous. Some, like
the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan, Ildefonso Schuster, seemed to prefer
direct religious support for Fascist university students through the chap-
lains of the Fascist university groups, the GUF, rather than—as had been
traditional—through the FUCI. A bitter and disconsolate Milanese fucino
wrote to Righetti in March 1934:
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
of adaptation. However, this adaptation inevitably creates an image of

passivity, modernity being an experience undergone despite—and not
because—of their religious convictions. In sum, the internal dynamics of
the Catholic world are neglected.
Perhaps, more importantly, these analyses also rest on a monolithic and
one-dimensional vision of modernity: that is, the model offered by the
Enlightenment and its rationalistic underpinnings. Moreover, they are
tainted with a positive moralistic approach to the subject, Enlightenment
version of modernity being a universal agent of education, well-being and
final liberation, resting on the rather old-fashioned notion of burgeoning
progress.
I argue instead that modernity should not be viewed as intrinsically
having a universal and objective moral value, though a strong transform-
ing drive is present in all its manifestations that could assume abhorrent
characters, as was all too clear in the case of Nazi Germany.14 Furthermore,
modernity should not be considered as an absolute, and any attempt at
too rigidly reifying it is doomed to failure. Additionally, visions of moder-
nity could coexist with an anti-democratic stance. Modernity is, there-
fore, perhaps better grasped as a symbolic place that condenses the hopes,
anxieties, and despairs of men brought about by the diverse processes of
‘modernisation’ from approximately the 1880s onwards—namely remark-
able technological inventions such as the telephone, the cinema, the aero-
plane— accompanied by the remorseless processes of urbanisation and
increasing labour division, together with expansion of rationalisation in
the fields of state bureaucracy, economy, and social provisions. All of these,
by frenetically interacting with each other, affected changes in lifestyles,
values and, indeed, the very basic conceptions of time and space.15 As
such, modernity was a project that aimed at a total refashioning of man-
kind, implying a discontinuous process that encompassed fractures and
negations. As one of the most distinguished academics of the subject has
proclaimed, ‘to be modern is to live a life of paradox and contradiction’,16
deriving its dynamism and creativity precisely from those oppositions that
create the illusion that everything is possible. It can often be perceived
as bulimic, hurried, impatient, febrile, constantly devouring and getting
bored with itself,17 seemingly deviant and nearly schizophrenic.18 Thus,
the ambiguities and contradictions that are present in the relationship
between religion and modernity should be understood within the wider
framework of the contradictions of modernity itself.19
70 J. DAGNINO
Our understanding of Catholic modernities also depends to some

extent on our judgement of the Fascist regime itself. Were we to con-
sider it essentially as a façade, an expression of conservative interests and
endemic opportunism with no proper ideology of its own—in sum, a his-
torical negativity20—then its relationship with a Catholic understanding
of modernity would inevitably result in the pursuit of a chimera. On the
other hand, if Fascism is to be approached as an alternative form of moder-
nity,21 or, indeed, as a manifestation of political modernism22 or ‘totali-
tarian modernity’23—as a group of men who thought they were leading
Italy to the new post-liberal age24—then the issue of relations between
religion and Fascism acquires a new angle that opens new possibilities
for research. In recent times it has been Roger Griffin who has achieved
the most ambitious and sophisticated ideal-type model for the relation-
ship between Fascism and modernism. He views Fascism as a modern
revitalisation movement, a manifestation of modernism and the latter as a
generic term for a wide array of movements and initiatives whose common
denominator would lie in the goal of achieving a sense of ultimate mean-
ing, transcendence, and purpose, amid a general perception of Western
civilisation being in crisis.25
George L. Mosse has observed that especially after the Great War and
the escalating effects of rapid industrialisation and urbanisation, a growing
sensation of alienation from nature and from man’s individuality was dra-
matically felt by millions of Europeans, thus provoking a deeply embedded
yearning for wholeness and totality.26 It was to this unease that Fascists
and Catholics alike responded with their own visions of modernity, both
aiming at a spiritual order able to cleanse, purify, and redeem the negative
effects of modernisation in a new and more perfect historical synthesis.27
This was motivated not by a nostalgic longing for better times but, more
precisely, through the aim of transforming and elevating the present by a
leap into the future. In this sense, Ruth Ben-Ghiat has rightly underlined
the importance of the concept of bonifica, which can loosely be translated
as reclamation, that is making fit and new what otherwise is facing an
inexorable decay.28
Interwar Italy, as was the case for the rest of Catholic Europe, was also
an age of a burgeoning visual presence of the faith, manifested in massive
rallies, parades, pilgrimages, and the proud use of banners and symbols,
all intended to rally the faithful in as large numbers as possible in the
public sphere. The pope was the guardian of the truth and the beacon
for the faithful, conserving the Christian message in its state of purity.
In many ways, it reflected the ‘fortress mentality’ of many Catholics of

the time.29 The period was not devoid of old-style anathemas, condem-
nations, and denunciations of the rotten ‘old world’ in its crisis of moral
and religious life. But what was striking in the period was the new-found
confidence and optimism of the church. The pope and the faithful still
engaged in intransigent and at times reactionary attitudes, but it was no
longer solely the spirit of a besieged, over-cautious Catholic ‘ghetto’ that
had been so characteristic from Pius IX onwards. As Renato Moro has
cogently observed, for many there was a neat historical divide between the
last two centuries. If the nineteenth had been ‘negative, materialistic, posi-
tivistic, laicist and anticlerical’, the twentieth emerged as an age that was
‘positive, spiritualistic, hierarchical, religious, philo-Catholic’.30 A deeply
rooted conviction that a new civilisation was emerging characterised the
period. It was now the turn of the church and its crusaders to be in posses-
sion of modernity. Adriano Bernareggi, one of the ecclesiastical assistants
of the laureati, expressed this new feeling in a speech he gave in 1933 at
the Social Week of Italian Catholics in 1933: ‘In its first period, Catholic
Action was fully absorbed by the defence and conquest of God’s rights
in society. Nowadays, instead, it aims … to create an eminently Catholic
conscience.’31
Under Montini and Righetti there had been no lack of philo-Fascist
elements within the FUCI’s ranks, but they had not assumed a leading
voice. This changed after their departure, not only because of the new
Italian political situation but, much more importantly, because of the
new generation that started to emerge—one that was born around 1915.
This generation had little or no contact either with the experience of the
Popular Party or with the tradition of Social Catholicism and its social
organisations. Having been educated almost entirely under the Fascist
government, they regarded the regime as the normal institution and, in
many ways, the ideal one. Giolitti’s Italy and the parliamentary system
under which Sturzo’s party had flourished seemed increasingly an element
of the past, a dated form of political institutionalisation that had little to
offer to the ‘new Italy’. This demanded an immersion into history and
into the socio-political realities of Italy, unless the FUCI was to risk the
danger of estranging itself from the exciting new developments. This nat-
urally entailed a warmer attitude to Fascism. The anxiety and implicit criti-
cism of the Montini line as out of touch with the times is clearly reflected
in a letter a student wrote in 1934 to Aurelia Bobbio, the latter in charge
of the Secretariat for Culture of the federation: ‘That of not engaging with
72 J. DAGNINO
politics … seems to me to be a pretext to escape certain responsibilities. I

would understand the issue were there fundamental doctrinal differences
between Fascism and Catholicism … why be so reserved and prudent?’
She went on to complain how in ‘the fifteen months I have been receiving
Azione fucina only once (and we are in the Rome of the year XII) has the
word “the Head of Government” appeared and I do not remember once
having read the word “fascism”… It is an impression that does not escape
us, fascist fucini.’ She finished by demanding the adoption of a ‘more
determined position, clearer, sincerer, more frankly positive’.32
In a perceived epochal decade, radicalised by the surfacing of fascist
movements and parties throughout Europe, the devastating effects of the
1929 economic depression and the Spanish Civil War, fascism offered, to
some extent at least, the possibility of wholeness, of an identity capable of
taming the turbulent times, ‘a moral and political conception of man and
citizen, absolutely irreconcilable with either liberalism or communism’.33
Liberal Italy had caused the dispersion of the best energies of the nation,
a true ‘disarticulation of man’. In this sense, to many in the FUCI associa-
tions, fascism represented the very modern aspiration towards wholeness
and unity of life, the restoration of man’s primitive qualities in times of
burgeoning changes and threats to individual identities. In this way, we
can better understand the importance of the concept of ‘order’ for so
many Catholics of the period. Traditionally, the term has been viewed as
a patent demonstration of their conservative leanings, as a determined
will to preserve the status quo at any cost. While this is partly true, it does
not fully convey the significance and importance of the notion. Above all,
order was a ‘manifestation of their own divine perfection’ and, as such,
men were called to discover it through their minds and wills and, further-
more, to enhance that perfection. Order as such was not a static reality
but a dynamic one, at the service of the development of the self.34 In
this sense, too, one has to understand the engaging power of the myth
of society as an organism, that is as a living and vibrant entity that would
once again permit existence to flow after the artificial and disjointed lib-
eral order. This generated the desire for a ‘central idea, a conception that
dominates, embraces and coordinates everything, that is, a totalitarian
conception and idea’. For many in the early 1930s there was no doubt:
‘among us, Fascism is that idea from the social and political perspective’.35
Another fascination with Fascist projects of modernity was represented
by the appeal of its generational character. In Italy, the cult of youth was not
exclusive to Fascist ideology. A rhetoric of rejuvenation and r evitalisation
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
were all central elements in the relaunching of a militant and triumpha-

listic Catholicism, imbued with an energetic optimism that sprang from
the ambitious project of penetrating the cultural, social, familial, and eco-
nomic structures of the contemporary world. According to a Tridentine
ecclesiological model, the goal was a restructuring of the Italian church
in a more united sense, a model that has been elegantly described by
Francesco Traniello as ‘national and pontifical’,43 a project that in some
respects was symmetrical to that championed by Fascism but which also
presented potential conflicts.
Another ambit that saw a sizeable degree of convergence with Fascist
projects of modernity during the 1930s and intimately tied to the Catholic
elaboration of the nation, was to be found in the institution of the family
and the so-called ‘demographic battle’.44 Traditional Catholic ethics had
always supported the notion of a large family, the sanctity of marriage
and motherhood. The family, in key areas such as education, had a pre-
eminent role over the state,45 according to the teachings of the church.
Nevertheless, during the 1930s among some Catholics the family started
to move beyond the private sphere and assume a more prominent public
function. A large family meant a dynamic, healthy, creative, and power-
ful nation. For Fascism, too, family policies were a key instrument in the
construction of the totalitarian state and the creation of a ‘new man’ and
a ‘new woman’,46 and had thus introduced legislation rewarding large
families, imposing taxes on bachelors, among other provisions. The fam-
ily, therefore, acquired a pivotal role in social engineering schemes and
in fulfilling Italy’s destiny of becoming a leading power in the concert
of nations. Some Catholic intellectuals thus called for a union of ‘fam-
ily–school–nation’, so that the Italian family acquired an awareness of its
heroism and greatness.47 As such, the demographic campaign was seen not
solely within conventional pietistic and charitable terms but through very
modern nationalistic expressions. Consequently, birth control policies
practised in places such as Britain and France were decried not only because
they broke the supposedly ‘natural’ link between sexual intercourse and
procreation, but also because they undermined a healthy national morale.
Derived from hedonism and frailty, they failed to rise to the challenge of
collective sacrifice—the only path to a spiritual and national greatness.
Furthermore, in their great majority, these ideas were alien to Italian cul-
ture, presented as of ‘Jewish, Freemasonic and Internationalist’ origin.48
These Catholics rejected Nationalist Socialist racist policies.49 However,
they did not reject the idea of improving the characteristics of a people.
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
by Catholics abroad, was, nevertheless, essentially favourable to the Italian

campaign. Pius XI, in his insistence on the value of peace and that to be
just the conquest had to be embedded in the Catholic spirit, appeared
to be aiming at subsuming the nationalist discourse under the Christian
banner.60
In the case of the FUCI, the Ethiopian conflict was the final blow for
the Montini-Righetti line. The hierarchy had embarked on a full support
for the government and would not tolerate any divergence from its official
line. To avoid any potential conflicts with the government, the national
congress of the FUCI scheduled to be held in Bari in September 1935
was cancelled at the last minute, causing outrage on the part of many in
the association. To the same effect, the Social Week of the laureati that
was going to take place in the same month was also annulled. After the
suspension of the congress, the Superior Council of the FUCI met in
Rome on 8 September 1935. At the meeting, Righetti, Costa, and Guano
expressed their perplexity and impotence at the sudden turn of events,
Righetti expressing how until very recently the new attitude had been
considered illegitimate, Costa urging that at future FUCI gatherings all
political attitudes be avoided.61 Nevertheless, it would be misleading to
think that the opinions of these leaders constituted the dominant trend
among Catholic students. On the contrary, Righetti would feel ever more
isolated and helpless with regard to the dominant drift now present among
the intellectuals of Catholic Action. For the fucini, the Ethiopian war was
no common aggression but a spiritual, modern, and national enterprise
that would lead Italy to a grandiose future in its palingenetic quest for
the health of its people. The editorial published in Azione fucina gave
voice to this enthusiasm, using a rhetoric of proud militarism,62 to declare
that the words pronounced by Mussolini from the Palazzo Venezia at the
beginning of the conflict had found ‘all Italians disciplined in a grandiose
will that has no precedents in history. They have received them with that
sense of compactness, discipline and conscious pride that is the precious
gift of a people that is oriented to the future.’ The myth of ‘Catholic Italy’
loomed clearly in the horizon: ‘the sentiment of duty and dedication to
the Fatherland grows in the Christian soul, devoted to the ideal of its
greatness and honour, to its destinies of civilisation and progress, to which
divine providence has called Italy throughout the centuries’. The war also
represented for those who had been too young or had not been born to
fight the Great War, the possibility of adulthood, a development of virility
under the nationalist banner.63 The conflict expressed for many students
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
Righetti, ever more alone among the intellectuals of Catholic Action,

could not hide his impotence. What is striking is his sense of passivity and,
indeed, inadequacy to understand the recent developments in the history
of the nation. In a letter to Baroni he expressed his mood: ‘My state of
mind is the following: I do not judge the war be it because I cannot since I
do not have all the elements, be it because I submit to the decisions of the
political authority. On another hand, it is enough for me to know, from
the brief examination I can make, that it is too difficult to find a definition
of justice, so complex are the elements of form and substance.’67
Most in the association, however, warmly embraced the African empire.
These Catholics stressed that the new empire had no relationship with
previous forms of foreign domination, especially the British and French
versions.68 The venture aimed at the ‘fulfilment of justice’,69 as the FUCI’s
president, Giovanni Ambrosetti, affirmed. Additionally, it was presented
as a modernising enterprise that would deliver African ‘barbarians’ from
slavery, backwardness, and chaos. Colonisation could not be a predatory
process, not because it was solely considered intrinsically immoral but pre-
cisely because it was an outmoded form of political action. Colonialism
based on economic factors was, furthermore, uncivil, unsophisticated—
the reflection of a weak and self-indulgent people totally incapable of
transforming the earth. Fascists also tried to dress their campaign in the
robes of discipline and civility,70 but in this sense Catholics could reclaim
a more profound inspiration for their support of imperialism through the
ideal of charity. The Italian state, immune from the debauched economic
colonialism so typical of the British, was also making an ahistorical people
become part of history, bringing them into the categories of time and
space. Ultimately, through Italy’s civilising mission, empire was destined
to produce a people out of an undifferentiated mass and construct a mem-
ory for otherwise ‘barbarian slaves’ and call them to participate in the rich
possibilities of the earth.71 Through empire, Italians were ‘empowering
the personalities of individuals’. It was a ‘sacred commitment’ to confer to
Africans all the ‘greatness of our civilisation’.72
The myth of empire, so central in Fascist ideology,73 was one of the
clearest points of convergence between the Fascist and Catholic projects.
Perhaps the most eloquent fucino to advocate the ideal of empire was
Paolo Emilio Taviani:
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
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
Empire seemed to be the tangible manifestation of the birth of a mod-

ern Catholic Italy, a perfect fusion of the spiritual and temporal order:
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
(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
(Rome, 1960) and Il Movimento Laureati di AC. Notizie e documenti

(1932–1947) (Rome, 1947).
4. Letter of 4 March 1935 in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b.
‘Presidenza 1933/35’.
5. R. De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936 (Turin,
1996). De Felice’s thesis caused a minor earthquake when it was first for-
mulated. However, the Italian historian did not suggest that there existed
a unanimous consensus, nor that it entailed a fanatical communion between
the Italian people and il Duce. Rather, he argued that during these years
the population largely accommodated itself to the regime and that to
explain this situation it was not sufficient to attribute it to the repressive
mechanisms present in the dictatorship.
6. P. Milza, Mussolini (Rome, 2000), 599–657; S. Colarizi, L’opinione degli
italiani sotto il regime 1929–1943 (Rome-Bari, 2000), 133 ff.
7. R. De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso, 567 ff. In 1933,
Winston Churchill would hail the Duce in 1933 as ‘the greatest living
legislator’, cited in S. Payne, A History of Fascism 1914–45 (London,
1995), 218.
8. R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce. Catholic students in Fascist Italy, (New
York, 1990), 176 and 145, respectively. It has already been shown how
erroneous it is to portray Montini’s and Righetti’s FUCI as ‘anti-Fascist’
and how it is much more accurate, as Moro does, to speak of it in terms of
‘a-Fascism’. Even Wolff seems to express some reservations at the end of
his study when he says that ‘It would not be entirely accurate to label the
FUCI an anti-Fascist organisation without qualification’. See ibid., 222.
9. Ibid.
10. P. Misner, ‘Catholic Labor and Catholic Action: the Italian context of
Quadragesimo Anno’, Catholic Historical Review, 90/4 (2004), 650–74,
esp. 668.
11. A. Acerbi, Chiesa cultura società. Momenti e figure dal Vaticano I a Paolo
VI (Milan, 1988), 127–65.
12. For a relatively recent example of this somewhat naïve approach see J. P.
Corrin, Catholic intellectuals and the challenge of democracy (Notre Dame,
2002).
13. V. Ferrone, ‘Chiesa cattolica e modernità. La scoperta dei diritti dell’uomo
dopo l’esperienza dei totalitarismi’ in F. Bolgiani, V. Ferrone and
F. Margiotta Broglio (eds.), Chiesa cattolica e modernità. Atti del convegno
della fondazione Michele Pellegrino (Bologna, 2004), 17–131.
14. P. Betts, ‘The New Fascination with Fascism: The case of Nazi Modernism’,
Journal of Contemporary History, 37/4 (2002), 541–58; P. Fritzsche,
‘Nazi Modern’, Modernism/modernity, 3/1 1996, 1–21 and M. Roseman,
‘National Socialism and modernisation’ in R. Bessel (ed.), Fascist Italy and
Nazi Germany. Comparisons and contrasts (Cambridge, 1996), 197–229.
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
Fascism’ in G. Levi and J.-C. Schmitt (eds.), A history of young people in the

west. Stormy evolution to modern times (Cambridge, Mass., and London,
1997), 232–56; M. C. Giuntella, Autonomia e nazionalizzazione
dell’università. Il fascismo e l’inquadramento degli atenei (Rome, 1992),
especially 125–70; B. Wanrooij, ‘The rise and fall of Italian Fascism as a gen-
erational revolt’, Journal of Contemporary History, 22/3 (1987), 401–18;
T.H. Koon, Believe, Obey, Fight. Political socialization of youth in Fascist Italy,
1922–1943 (Chapel Hill and London, 1985); C. Betti, L’Opera nazionale
balilla e l’educazione fascista (Florence, 1984).
38. P. A. Borsieri, ‘Alessandro Manzoni. Poeta nazionale degli italiani I’,

Studium, 10 (1927).
39. P. A. Borsieri, ‘Alessandro Manzoni. Poeta nazionale degli italiani II’,
Studium, 11 (1927).
40. For this ideal, see, among others, G. Miccoli, Fra mito della cristianità e
secolarizzazione. Studi sul rapporto chiesa-società nell’età contemporanea
(Casale Monferrato, 1985); F. Traniello, ‘L’Italia cattolica nell’era fascista’
in G. De Rosa, T. Gregory and A. Vauchez (eds.), Storia dell’Italia religi-
osa. L’età contemporanea (Rome and Bari, 1995), 257–99; G. Formigoni,
L’Italia dei cattolici. Fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Reppublica
(Bologna, 1998); G. Vecchio, ‘Pattriotismo e universalismo nelle associ-
azioni laicali cattoliche’ in A. Acerbi (ed.), La Chiesa e l’Italia. Per una
storia dei loro rapporti negli ultimi due secoli (Milan, 2003) 233–74; and
R. Moro, ‘Nazione, cattolicesimo e regime fascista’, Rivista di storia del
cristianesimo, 1 (2004), 129–47.
41. Adriano Brenareggi, ‘La professione da un punto di vista spirituale’,

Studium, 1 (1934).
42. P. Scoppola, ‘Gli orientamenti di Pio XI e Pio XII sui problemi della società
contemporanea’ in M. Guasco, E. Guerriero and F. Traniello (eds.), I cat-
tolici nel mondo contemporaneo (1922–1958) (Milan, 1996), 139.
43. F. Traniello, ‘L’Italia cattolica nell’era fascista’, 266.
44. For demographic policies during the regime, see, for example, C. Ipsen,
Dictating demography: the problem of population in Fascist Italy (Cambridge,
1996) and D. G. Horn, Social bodies: science, reproduction and Italian
modernity (Princeton, 1994). For an interesting comparison between
Fascist and Catholic conceptions of the family see C. Dau Novelli, Famiglia
e modernizzazione in Italia tra le due guerre (Rome, 1994).
45. See Pius XI’s noted encyclical Casti Connubii, 31 December 1930.
46. C. Dau Novelli, Famiglia e modernizzazione, 103.
47. Augusto Baroni, ‘Famiglia e Nazione’, Studium, 11 (1935).
48. Guido Lami, ‘Finalità biologica e demografia’, Azione fucina, 26 December
1937.
84 J. DAGNINO
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.
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
71. ‘Impero italiano’, Azione fucina, 3 May 1936.

72. Mario Cortellese, ‘Italia imperiale’, Azione fucina, 9 May 1937.
73. For a synthetic account of this myth, see M. Isnenghi, ‘Il mito di potenza’
in A. Del Bocca, M. Legnani and M.G. Rossi (eds.), Il regime Fascista.
Storia e storiografia (Rome and Bari, 1995), 139–50.
74. P. E. Taviani, ‘La nuova pace e il nuovo impero’, Vita e pensiero, June 1936.
75. ‘Augurio all’Italia’, Studium, 5 (1936).
76. Testimony in the collection of interviews edited by A. Grandi, I giovani di
Mussolini. Fascisti convinti, fascisti pentiti, antifascisti (Milan, 2001) 231.
CHAPTER 6
The Crisis of Civilisation

and the Sacralisation of Politics
in 1930s Europe
The perception of being at a turning and critical point in Western

European civilisation was a widespread idea among European Catholics in
the interwar period.1 In this sense, the FUCI was no exception.2 What was
at stake in the eyes of many FUCI intellectuals was the need for a return to
a wholly Catholic vision capable of interpreting contemporary reality and,
thus, recast and regenerate European culture through the strength of the
universality of Christianity. The crisis of civilisation was also depicted as a
total crisis that—especially after the economic crisis of 1929—seemed to
affect the principal structures and political experiments of the continent,
be it the USSR, Nazi Germany, the League of Nations, or the experi-
ence of the Popular Front movements. Furthermore, the crisis affected
the unity of man, in his spiritual and metaphysical dimensions. The deca-
dence of Western civilisation was presented as all-pervasive, penetrating
the life of the spirit, the family, the worlds of education and science, lib-
erty and democracy.3 If the crisis was above all spiritual in nature, then
the solution had to be sought at a spiritual level, in the quest for a new
and reinvigorated sense of transcendence.4 In this sense, it was significant
that both the FUCI and the Movimento Laureati devoted considerable
attention to foreign authors, through whose works they analysed the pres-
ent critical conditions of Western civilisation. One of the most influential
was certainly the French Catholic writer Henri Daniel-Rops, whose prin-
cipal book on the subject was translated by the publisher Morcelliana,

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_6
88 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
economic crisis of 1929, Bernareggi went on to condemn not just specific

aspects of the prevailing economic system but its fundamental structures,
which were seen in the perspective of the ecclesiastical assistant as a con-
sequence of the ‘spiritual crisis’.11 In sum, the current spiritual crisis could
be summed up as a ‘defect of science, a defect of conscience and a defect
of God’. What was lacking was ‘a general vision of the universe, an integral
interpretation of life’.12
Along similar lines, the ecclesiastical assistant Franco Costa diag-
nosed that every instability, social strife, international conflict, the violent
replacement of institutions and government was a logical consequence of
‘the lack of unity both in the individual and social life’13 and of the loss
of the correct equilibrium between authority and liberty. In the absence
of the perfect balance between reason, will, and sentiment, Western man
was trapped in a fever of exteriority, where the cult of action for action’s
sake was the norm, leading to the alienation of his most intimate self. The
university students repeatedly denounced this ‘monstrous fever of exter-
nal activity’ engaged in by the people of the twentieth century,14 whereby
they were progressively losing ‘the harmony between the ephemeral and
the eternal, between the phenomenon and the immutable’.15 Having lost
a supraterrestrial horizon, contemporary man was caught in a mania for
action, ‘tormented by an irresistible desire for action, for movement, for
howling … because only thus does he seem to feel alive’.16 In sum, the
central tenets of the crisis were to be located in an exasperated materialism
and individualism; a materialism that had driven European culture away
from the Christian spirit, with the result of a ‘fatal unbalance between a
body that has become adult and a soul … struck with an infantile paraly-
sis. In this way the unleashed matter threatens, hurts and kills man and
civilisation.’17
However, what caused most concern among the fucini and the
Movimento Laureati was not the mere apostasy of increasing numbers
of Europeans, but the emergence of alternative religiosities, of different
narratives of the sacred—in sum, the appearance of the phenomenon of
sacralisation of politics and political religions, particularly in the case of
Bolshevism, National Socialism and, to a lesser extent, Italian Fascism.
In recent years there has been a sustained revival and interest in the sub-
ject of political religions. An important landmark in this development was
the founding in 2000 of the journal Totalitarian Movements and Political
Religions by Michael Burleigh, Emilio Gentile and Robert Mallett, and
today there is a growing literature on the subject.18 However, and despite
90 J. DAGNINO
this proliferation of publications on the topic, the perspective of contem-

porary Catholics on this subject has hardly been investigated, save for the
notable exceptions of Emilio Gentile and Renato Moro.19 This neglect of
the theme by scholars of contemporary Catholicism is especially striking,
since the views of representatives of traditional religions are obviously of
considerable importance in investigating how far one can detect the emer-
gence of political religions in the interwar period.
In this chapter I follow above all the definition of political religion
given by Emilio Gentile as a brand of religiosity that sacralises an ide-
ology, a movement, or a political regime, through the deification of a
secular entity, whether it be class, the nation state, or race, and turns it
into the ultimate explanatory tool of human existence.20 Furthermore,
political religions are a by-product of modernity that developed only after
the constitution of a political sphere independent from religion and after
traditional religion had been turned into a private matter. Nevertheless,
this did not mean the disappearance of the sacred from the public sphere,
as the classic secularisation thesis would have it. Rather, the twentieth
century experienced a diaspora of the sacred, whereby a re-sacralisation
was the consequence of the process of secularisation itself.21 As a heuristic
device it is especially helpful for understanding the deeper motives that lay
behind the actions, practices, and thoughts of the most committed mem-
bers of the diverse totalitarian communities, especially the most murder-
ous ones—actions that otherwise would remain in the terrain of the pure
irrational, brutal, and bestial. Nevertheless, the concept has its limits too
and is particularly weak in explaining the institutional and organisational
dynamics and practices of totalitarian regimes.22
The Catholic Church had, at least since the second half of the nine-
teenth century, visualised modernity as pagan or paganising and the mod-
ern and secular state as an expression of exasperated statism or ‘statolatry’.
In 1888, Leo XIII had, in his encyclical Libertas, condemned this phe-
nomenon and characterised its supporters as those who made of the state
an absolute and omnipotent entity that discarded God. It was the very
principle of the sovereignty of the state that they perceived as giving birth
to a new form of paganism.23 Nevertheless, the concepts of a new pagan-
ism or statolatry were at this time still used in very generic terms and there
is little to suggest in them and their contents the perception of a proper
alternative religiosity. Rather, they referred to the continual polemic with
the alleged disproportionate demands of the modern state, whether lib-
eral or socialist. ‘All-encompassing State’, ‘State Moloch’, ‘Despotic State’
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
Bernareggi also spoke of the ‘new mystiques’, whether of communism or

of labour and the machine. According to the ecclesiastical assistant, these
new mystiques addressed the ‘need to provide an answer to the disquieted
spirit and to give an internal content to external reality’.30
Both the FUCI and the Movimento Laureati saw the twentieth century
as an age of extremes and the diverse totalitarian experiments as attempts
to overcome nineteenth-century individualism, pragmatism, and liberal-
ism. As such, it was an epoch that exacerbated antinomies; individual–soci-
ety, liberty–authority, spirit–matter, novelty–tradition, reason–will, among
others. Furthermore, it was a century that had renounced the balanced use
of reason, opting instead, in an age of mass politics, for ‘new mystiques’31
capable of mobilising the masses for great history-making enterprises.
But it was perhaps the later-renowned Belgian theologian, Yves Congar
who, in an article for the FUCI periodical Azione fucina in 1935, dis-
played the greatest and most sophisticated attentiveness to the topic of
the diaspora of the sacred and its development in interwar Europe. In his
view, behind the wave of contemporary incredulity lay not just a void but
‘a spiritual movement of a scope and continuity that is truly impressive.
In a word, the movement can be defined as the substitution of a tout of
Christian life by a tout of secular life … and the constitution of a purely
human spirituality.’32 Congar spoke of a modern ‘mystique of science’ and
a ‘mystique of humanity’, impregnated with a rationalism and a spirit of
immanence and a sense of an indefinite progress and inner-worldly salva-
tion.33 Congar went on to note the total character of the new religions,
their enveloping of all aspects of human life, their ‘not representing a par-
ticular idea, an idea among many other ones, but a total and radical point
of view, that imposes itself like an absolute, that in principle demands a
likewise total and radical disposition … In fact it is a FAITH and a revela-
tion … and a cult.’34
Thus, this vision of the political movements of the age as putative reli-
gions, seeking to provide solutions to the crisis of the age became a fre-
quent theme of FUCI publications in the 1930s. Unsurprisingly, this was
particularly so in their analyses of the totalitarian experiments of left and
right being carried out in contemporary Europe.
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
new religiosity35—the religious nature of communism, particularly in its

Russian variant.36 The religiosity of Soviet communism was a subject that
was widely discussed among European Catholics of the time. In 1936,
for example, Jacques Maritain defined Bolshevism as ‘an atheist theocratic
imperialism’.37
Though formally Marxist doctrine professed a radical and absolute
atheism, in practice Bolshevik Russia exhibited many religious traits. Even
the League of the Militant Godless founded in 1925, with its mockery
of Orthodox priests, anti-Christmases, and alternative Easters, somewhat
unwittingly and unconsciously demonstrated the existence of a mes-
sianic spirit and a ritual and cult.38 Similar in nature were the so-called
God-builders, the movement that revolved around Aleksandr Bogdanov,
Leonid Krassin, and Anatoly Lunacharsky. Though admittedly a minor
wing within Bolshevism and later repudiated by Lenin, the God-builders
sought to develop socialism more as a religion than a science and depicted
Marx as a prophet in the quest to establish Bolshevism as a secular religion
through a sense of community, rituals, and public festivals.39 FUCI writ-
ers picked up enthusiastically on these themes. Soviet communism was,
hence, not perceived by them as solely representing a titanic and antireli-
gious struggle against Christianity or as a massive movement of apostasy,
but as an alternative religiosity that sought to inaugurate a total secu-
larisation of the Christian credo, replacing it with its own dogmas, charis-
matic leaders, sacred texts, rituals, ceremonies, and festivals.40 According
to the university student Vittore Branca, in the USSR the leaders had
energetically embarked upon the building of a ‘new civilisation’, through
a ‘messianic spirit’, all with the help of diverse ‘mystical-religious tenden-
cies’ with the ultimate goal of establishing a ‘new Gospel’.41 Of course,
the campaign of demolition conducted against Christianity did not go
unnoticed in FUCI branches. The Bolshevik legislation on marriage, for
example, was adamantly denounced and condemned by FUCI, leading
the USSR, in their outlook, to the ‘most terrifying breakdown of all moral
values and to the establishment of the most absurd brutality’, in a ‘state
where instinct and violence predominate’.42 What was additionally trou-
bling about Bolshevism was its perceived universal vocation, as expressed
in the cases of Spain and Mexico, countries where the Catholic Church
experienced a new tide of religious persecution. These ‘militant athe-
ists’, according to the Jesuit Enrico Rosa, were ‘threatening every corner
of the civilised world, with the intention of corrupting and driving men
to a new barbarism that is even worse than the old pagan one’.43 Rosa
continued along the same vein, insisting that communists and socialists
94 J. DAGNINO
‘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
‘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
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
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
modernity and his application of them to the National Socialist experi-

ment. He worryingly observed the establishment of new dogmas in Nazi
Germany: the self-redemption of man, the ethics of the well-being of the
national community above the welfare of the individual, its radical activ-
ism, the national character of its ‘church’ and liturgy and the newly-found
sense of the ‘heroism of the morality of the Germanic religion’.97 From
Bendiscioli’s perspective, the sacralisation of politics was an integral part
of the totalitarian thrust present in Hitler’s movement, in an effort to
commence time anew: ‘The racist idea presents itself as the new truth, the
new light that must dissipate the darkness of illusion and error … That is
why it is affirmed as a totalitarian vision of the world that fills the entirety
of man.’98
What undoubtedly gave a major boost and encouragement to the
analyses given by the fucini on the sacral nature of the Nazi regime was
the publication, in March 1937, of the German-language encyclical Mit
brennender Sorge.99 In this document, Pius XI strongly rejected and con-
demned the aspects of Nazi ideology that constituted a political religion.
Speaking against those who preached that race, the people, or the state
were the supreme values of human existence, he solemnly declared that
only ‘superficial souls can make the mistake of speaking of a national God,
of a national religion’.100 Pius XI went on to express his disapproval of the
adulteration of sacred notions of the Christian heritage. He rebuked the
use of terms such as revelation, when they were only used to express ‘sug-
gestions that come from the blood or race’. Striking at the heart of the
Nazis’ quest for an intramundane transcendence, the pontiff also rejected
the notion of an immortality that was nothing more than ‘the collec-
tive survival through the continuity of one’s own people’.101 In sum, in
Germany, through a bombardment of propaganda, what was being spread
was ‘a Gospel that has not been revealed by the celestial Father’.102
The Movimento Laureati reacted immediately to the promulgation of
both encyclicals against Bolshevism and Nazism and decided to devote
their spring meeting at Florence in 1937 to the analysis of the two papal
documents.103 But it was probably Stanislao Ceschi, who in a letter to
Righetti of 23 March 1937, best expressed the now-dominant views with
regard to Nazi Germany and its danger as a totalitarian regime: ‘I have
found the encyclical on neo-paganism truly magnificent. It has penetrated
the most intimate fibres of Catholics, even of those numb from a sad
servitude.’104
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 foremost pedagogue in the nationalisation of Italians and as the insti-

tutional framework where true liberty could be reached by individuals.
Furthermore, in the Fascist sacralisation of the state it was conceived as
the supreme spiritual reality, the only sphere in which citizens could realise
their full potential as material and spiritual beings.117 This trend was accen-
tuated in the 1935–40 period. Emilio Gentile has spoken of a totalitarian
acceleration during these years, manifested in a major effort to define the
totalitarian state ideologically, an ever-growing collaboration with Nazi
Germany, and the enormous growth of the role, power, and institutions
of the party.118
It is against this historical background that some fucini expressed
their concerns with regard to what they saw as a burgeoning tendency in
Fascism to advance as a totalitarian regime and as a political religion. They
strenuously defended man’s supra-terrestrial destiny against those who
tried to enclose man within intra-mundane limits and against those who
divinised ‘pantheistic conceptions of the state’.119 Others, like the fucino
Fausto Montanari, saw in Fascism and other similar movements a reaction
against the bourgeois order of the nineteenth century, that was depicted
by Fascists as conformist, centred in the well-being of the individual, self-
ish and without regard for the cause of the collectivity. As such, Fascism
represented a reaction in the opposite direction, with its emphasis on
‘dynamism’ and ‘heroism’ and, above all, by its affirmation that to live it ‘a
myth was necessary’.120 Twentieth-century man—and in this it is not dif-
ficult to perceive an indirect remark towards Fascism—in his myth-making
mania had idolised ‘brutal and destructive energy’ and had ‘sacrificed the
individual to the collectivity’.121 Montanari went on to note how many
citizens had accepted this sacrifice willingly, as a form of liberation and as a
means of obtaining a higher degree of spirituality—something that in the
writer’s perspective amounted to ‘a gloomy and desperate heroism’ and to
‘the destruction of the individual for the welfare of the species’.122 What
was worse about this predicament was that the disillusionment caused by
nineteenth-century individualism meant that ‘we no longer believe in the
value of the individual person and, thus we throw our hopes into the
abstract collectivity’ as a means to regenerate and give ultimate meaning
to human existence.123 The fucini had no problems with the idea of an
ethical state, as long as it was not one theorised by Giovanni Gentile but
inspired and informed by Christian ethics. In the case of Gentile’s con-
ception of the state, an exacerbated sense of nationalism made the state
‘become a monstrous being, in which individuals disappear, losing every
104 J. DAGNINO
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
A frequent way of indirectly and obliquely criticising the Fascist regime

was to refer to past historical examples—examples in which the attentive
reader could not miss their contemporary meaning. In this sense, it is
interesting to note the reference to ancient Greece, where, according to
some fucini, ‘the unique absolute value was the state and it was the state
that rendered sacred the life of the citizens … and to the same citizens the
state did not recognise a true conscience. Even the gods were true because
the state said so.’126
Another aspect in which there was a growing concern among some
Catholic intellectuals was Fascism’s projected anthropological revolution
and its quest to create a New Man.127 As the Fascist Mario Carli pointed
out, the task was to regenerate and reinvigorate Italians, to ‘remake the
minds of Italians’128 so that they would leave behind the heritage of cosy
bourgeois culture and be instead devoted to action, cultivate creative intel-
ligence, and be staunchly committed in heart and soul to the deified nation.
Furthermore, the New Italian Man would be able to see ‘in sport and the
muscular development of the race a guarantee of his future prosperity’.129
Additionally, this New Man was supposed to be infused with Fascism’s mil-
itarisation of politics, creating the new type of the citizen-soldier, imbued
with the heroic, mystical and warrior morality of the party in order to
produce a ‘warrior society’.130 Fascism aimed at creating a new man collec-
tively organised, a ‘collective harmonic’, a ‘liturgical mass’ that would pur-
portedly participate with full consciousness and joy in the new rites enacted
by the regime.131 Like many other Fascist myths, the myth of the New Man
was to be located in the regenerative experience of the Great War, which
had created ‘the revolutionary of Mazzini and Nietzsche’s superman’.132
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
so in the cases of Bolshevik Russia and Nazi Germany. With regard to

Fascist Italy, a strong sense of ambivalence prevailed, with only a minor-
ity of voices being able to comprehend the main tenets of the new Fascist
religion. But even in the case of Mussolini’s regime, some fully recognised
the dangers of such central elements of the Italian political religion such
as the deification of the state and the nation, the myth of the New Man,
and the cult of the leader as a charismatic and prophetic figure. Indeed,
Fascist authorities were well aware of these criticisms and some registered
the fucini’s preoccupation that Mussolini wanted to transform Fascism
into ‘a true and proper religion’.146 Father Giulio Bevilacqua, one of the
most lucid observers of this phenomenon, was put under close surveil-
lance by Fascist informants who invariably spoke of him as ‘an anti-Fascist
of the first degree’ and as a priest who ‘worked systematically against the
regime’.147 It was precisely Bevilacqua who perhaps offered the most force-
ful reproof against the political religions of the interwar period. According
to Bevilacqua, idolatry was ‘the number one enemy of Christ’ in contem-
porary times and the ‘human mystiques’ rendered nothing else but the
‘cult of sheer force and violence’.148 He concluded by saying:
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
It was the Catholic intellectuals’ major challenge to remove contempo-

rary idols and replace them with a reinvigorated Catholicism that was able
to address the most intimate needs of man in the critical years of interwar
Europe. It had to be a Catholicism attuned to the times, capable of spiri-
tualising them and offering an alternative Catholic modernity, which will
form the topic of the next chapter of this book.
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
Don Giuseppe De Luca (Genoa, 1998); G. Antonazzi, Don Giuseppe De

Luca, uomo cristiano e prete (1898–1962) (Brescia, 1992); P. Vian (ed.),
Giuseppe De Luca-Giovanni Battista Montini. Carteggio 1930–1962
(Brescia and Rome, 1992); L. Mangoni, In partibus infidelium. Don
Giuseppe De Luca: il mondo cattolico e la cultura italiana del Novecento
(Turin, 1989); and R. De Felice and R. Moro (eds.), Giuseppe Bottai-Don
Giuseppe De Luca. Carteggio 1940–1957 (Rome, 1989).
9. A. Bernareggi, ‘La crisi della cultura contemporanea e il Cattolicesimo’,
Studium, 6 (1937). This article was the inaugural lecture given at the first
convention of the Movimento Laureati held in 1936.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid.
12. Ibid.
13. Franco Costa’ Esigenza di unità nella vita sociale’, Azione fucina, 28
February 1937.
14. Mario Mantovani, ‘Le vie dello spirito’, Azione fucina, 17 March 1935.
15. Ibid.
16. Mario Puppo, ‘Perennità dell’umanesimo’, Azione fucina, 29 January
1939.
17. Miles, ‘Il Metodo di Gesù’, Studium, 4 (1936).
18. See, among many others, A. J. Gregor, Totalitarianism and Political
Religion. An Intellectual History (Stanford, 2012); R. Griffin, R. Mallett
and J. Tortorice (eds.), The Sacred in Twentieth-Century Politics: Essays in
Honour of Professor Stanley G. Payne (New York, 2008); H. Maier (ed.),
Totalitarianism and Political Religions. Concepts for the comparison of dic-
tatorships, 3 vols (London and New York, 2004–2007); M. Burleigh,
Earthly Powers: the Clash of Religion and Politics in Europe, from the
French Revolution to the Great War (London, 2006); idem, Sacred Causes.
Religion and Politics from the European dictators to Al Qaeda (London,
2006); K. Poewe, New Religions and the Nazis (London and New York,
2006); R. Griffin (ed.), Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion
(London and New York, 2005); C. Galeotti, Credere, Obbedire,
Combattere. I Catechismi del Fascismo (Rome, 1999); M. Berezin,
Making the Fascist Self. The Political Culture of Interwar Italy (Ithaca and
London, 1997) and A. J. Klinghoffer, Red Apocalypse. The Religious
Evolution of Soviet Communism (Maryland, 1996). However, it has prob-
ably been Emilio Gentile who has provided the most methodologically
sophisticated and historically grounded accounts of the phenomenon of
the sacralisation of politics. Among his many publications dealing with
the subject, see, for example, E. Gentile, ‘Fascism, Totalitarianism and
Political Religion: Definitions and Critical Reflections on Criticism of an
Interpretation’ in R. Griffin (ed.), Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political
110 J. DAGNINO
Religion, 32–81; idem, Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della polit-

ica nell’Italia fascista (Rome and Bari, 2003); idem, Le religioni della
politica. Fra democrazie e totalitarismi (Rome and Bari, 2001) and idem,
‘Fascism as Political Religion’, Journal of Contemporary History, 25/ 1
(1990), 229–51.
19. E. Gentile, ‘New idols: Catholicism in the face of Fascist totalitarianism’,
Journal of Modern Italian Studies, 11/2 (2006), 143–70. Already in his
Le religioni della politica, Gentile had devoted chapter IV to American
and European Christians reactions to the trend. By Renato Moro, see his
‘Religione del Trascendente e Religioni Politiche. Il cattolicesimo ital-
iano di fronte alla sacralizzazione fascista della politica’, Mondo contempo-
raneo, 1/1 (2005), 9–67. This is the most thorough analysis to date of
the impressions caused in the different milieux of Italian Catholics with
regard to the emergence of political religions in an age of mass politics.
However, he tends to underestimate the capacity that Italian Catholics
had of diagnosing and comprehending the process (see especially
pp. 62–7). Additionally, in this article, the FUCI does not receive a com-
prehensive treatment.
20. E. Gentile, ‘Fascism, Totalitarianism and Political Religion: Definitions
and Critical Reflections on Criticism of an Interpretation’, 32. It has to
be remembered that, additionally, Gentile makes the existence of a politi-
cal religion an integral part of his definition of totalitarianism. See his Le
religioni della politica, 71.
21. M. Cattaruzza, ‘Introduction to the special issue of Totalitarian
Movements and Political Religions: Political Religions as a Characteristic
of the 20th Century’, Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions,
6/1 (2005), 2–3.
22. S. Payne, ‘On the Heuristic Value of the Concept of Political Religion
and its Application’, Totalitarian movements and Political Religions, 6/2
(2005), 163–74; H. Maier, ‘Concepts for the comparison of dictator-
ships: ‘totalitarianism’ and ‘political religions”, in idem (ed.),
Totalitarianism and Political Religions, i, 199–215. More recently, Kevin
Passmore has argued that there is a gender bias in the theory of political
religions. See his ‘The Gendered Genealogy of Political Religions
Theory’, Gender and History, 20/3 (2008), 644–68.
23. E. Gentile, ‘New Idols’, 144, and R. Moro, ‘Religione del Trascendente
e Religioni politiche…’, 11–12.
24. For the use of these and other expressions just after the First World War,
see M. Bocci, Oltre lo Stato liberale. Ipotesi su politica e società nel dibattito
cattolico fra fascismo e democrazia (Rome, 1999), 34, 51.
25. Montini to Emilio Guano, 7 March 1935, in Archivio Emilio Guano,
b.4, f. ‘FUCI. Corrispondenza 1933–1936’.
26. A. De Gasperi, Scritti di politica internazionale, 1933–1938, ii (Vatican

City, 1981), 438–39.
27. Igino Giordani, ‘Segno di contraddizione’, Azione fucina, 16 April 1933.
This is an extract of his book of the same title, Segno di contraddizione
(Brescia, 1933), which received an enthusiastic review in the federation’s
press. See Francesco Aquilanti, ‘Recensioni’, Studium, 7–8 (1933). For
more on Giordani and his interpretations of political religions, see
M. Casella, Igino Giordani. La pace comincia da noi (Rome, 1990) and
E. Gentile, Le religioni della politica, 145–46.
28. Giulio Bevilacqua, ‘Entusiasmo per l’uomo’, Studium, 1 (1936).
29. Giulio Bevilacqua, ‘Fuoco di Pentecoste’, Studium, 5 (1937).
30. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La crisi della cultura contemporanea e il
Cattolicesimo’, Studium, 6 (1937).
31. REDS, ‘Crisi di Follia’, Studium, 1 (1938).
32. Yves Congar, ‘Il mondo moderno e la fede’, Azione fucina 20 October
1935. This article, which was published in three parts in the FUCI’s
journal, was the summary of the conclusions of a study conducted by the
French journal La vie intellectuelle between 1934 and 1935.
33. Ibid.
34. Yves Congar, ‘Il mondo moderno e la fede’, Azione fucina, 3 November
1935.
35. On Berdiaev’s interpretations, see E. Gentile, Le religioni della politica,
120–121.
36. S. Paronetto, ‘Cattolicismo e socialismo’, Azione fucina, 20 November
1932; G. Gonella, ‘L’eredità del marxismo’, Azione fucina, 21 May 1933
and M. d’Herbigny, ‘La propaganda antireligiosa in Europa’, Studium, 5
(1935).
37. J. Maritain, Integral Humanism. Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a
New Christendom, [1936] (New York, 1973), 107.
38. D. Peris, Storming the Heavens: The Soviet League of the Militant Godless,
(Ithaca, 1998).
39. M. Burleigh, Sacred Causes, 42ff; A. J. Klinghoffer, Red Apocalypse,
49–51 and R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams. Utopian Vision and
Experimental Life in the Russian Revolution (New York and Oxford,
1989), 101–05.
40. For the early use of festivals, see J. von Geldern, Bolshevik Festivals,
1917–1920 (Berkeley, 1993).
41. Vittore Branca, ‘Scrittori Sovietici’, Azione fucina, 1 November 1936.
42. Giuseppe Spinelli, ‘La legislazione matrimoniale in Russia’, Azione
fucina, 13 December 1936.
43. E. R. (Enrico Rosa), ‘Vita Ecclesiase’, Studium, 5 (1934). See also E. R.,
‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 1 (1934), where Rosa repeated that socialism,
112 J. DAGNINO
Bolshevism and anarchism were all manifestations of a ‘new barbarism’.

The Jesuit Rosa had become one of the leading writers for Studium after
Montini’s departure from the FUCI. However, his Manichean vision of
history and at times extreme conservatism irritated many members in the
FUCI and the Movimento Laureati. Augusto Baroni, for example, com-
plained to Igino Righetti about Rosa’s regular column, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’,
saying that ‘Vita Ecclesiae’ should really change title and be called “review
of all the evils that the Church cannot find a solution to”. The effect of
his columns I find desolating: has Father Rosa become so old to not
understand it?’, Baroni to Righetti, 12 March 1935, Archivio del
Movimento Laureati, b.6. On Father Rosa see, A. M. Fiocchi, Padre
E. Rosa S. J., scrittore della ‘Civiltà Cattolic’ (1870–1938) (Rome, 1957).
44. E. R, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 4 (1936).
45. E. R, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 10 (1936).
46. D. Roberts, The Totalitarian Experiment in Twentieth-Century Europe.
Understanding the Poverty of Great Politics (New York and Abingdon,
2006), 213–70; S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism. Ordinary Life in
Extraordinary Times: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (New York, 2000),
67–79, and R. Stites, Revolutionary Dreams, 37–57.
47. I. Giordani, ‘Rassegne’, Studium, 5 (1934).
48. P. Ledit S. J., ‘Criteri direttivi dell’azione comunista’, Studium, 4 (1937).
On Bolshevism’s projected anthropological revolution see, for example,
P. Fritzsche and J. Hellbeck, ‘The New Man in Stalinist Russia and Nazi
Germany’, in M. Geyer and S. Fitzpatrick (eds.), Beyond Totalitarianism.
Stalinism and Nazism compared (Cambridge, 2009), 302–41; D. L.
Hoffman, Stalinist Values. The Cultural Norms of Soviet Modernity
(1917–1941) (Ithaca, 2003), 45–56; and S. Fitzpatrick, Everyday
Stalinism, 71–9.
49. Franco Piccardo, ‘Il problema religioso della Russia’, Azione fucina, 13
June 1937.
50. Miles, ‘Confiteor’, Studium, 12 (1936).
51. On the importance of this papal document see, for example, Y. Chiron,
Pie XI (1857–1939) (Paris, 2004), 359–63, and M. Agostino, Le Pape
Pie XI et l’opinion (1922–1939) (Rome, 1991), 639–61.
52. Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris, in Acción Católica Española, Colección de
Encíclicas y Cartas Pontificias (Buenos Aires, 1946), 548.
53. Ibid., 528–29.
54. Ibid., 530 and 533. For the FUCI’s and Movimento Laureati’s very posi-
tive reactions to the encyclical see, for example, E.R., ‘Vita Ecclesiae’,
Studium, 3 (1937) and ‘Una Enciclica sul comunismo’, Azione fucina,
21 March 1937.
55. Franco Piccardo, ‘Contributo di autori cattolici alla lotta anticomunista’,

Azione fucina, 4 December 1938.
56. G. B. Tragella, ‘La minaccia bolscevica in terra di missione’, Studium, 9
(1937).
57. Ibid.
58. Ibid.
59. Letter to Emilio Guano, 7 December 1936 in Archivio Emilio Guano,
b.4, f. ‘FUCI. Corrispondenza 1933–1936’.
60. C. Dawson, Religion and the Modern State (London, 1935), 52. On
Dawson’s view of the totalitarian experiments of the period, see
A. Schwartz, ‘Confronting the “Totalitarian Antichrist”: Christopher
Dawson and Totalitarianism’, Catholic Historical Review, 89/3 (2003),
464–88.
61. J. A. Biesinger, ‘The Reich Concordat of 1933. The Church Struggle
Against Nazi Germany’, in F.J. Coppa (ed.), Controversial Concordats.
The Vatican’s Relations with Napoleon, Mussolini, and Hitler (Washington
D.C., 1999), 136.
62. Ibid., 145.
63. R. J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power 1933–1939 (New York, 2005),
237–38; M. Burleigh, The Third Reich. A New History (New York, 2000),
677–78; and A. Rhodes, The Vatican in the Age of Dictators (1922–1945)
(New York, 1973), 197.
64. R. J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 239.
65. E.R., ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 6–7 (1934).
66. E.R., ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 6 (1937).
67. M. Costellesi, ‘I cattolici e l’annessione’, Azione fucina, 25 November
1934.
68. E. R., ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, 4 (1936).
69. L.V., ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 3 (1938).
70. M. Burleigh and W. Wippermann, The Racial State. Germany 1933–1945
(Cambridge, 1991), 48–9. See the strong refutation of the purported
‘scientific’ foundations of this legislation by Guido Lami, ‘Sulle basi sci-
entifiche dell’igiene razzista’, Studium, 10–11 (1933).
71. Mario Bendiscioli, ‘Recensioni’, Studium, 6–7 (1934); Mario Bendiscioli,
‘Diritto romano e diritto germanico’, Studium, 8–9 (1934) and
M. Bendiscioli (ed.), Romanesimo e Germanesimo (La crisi dell’Occidente),
(Brescia, 1933).
72. ‘Le condizioni religiose in Germania dopo il Concordato con la Santa
Sede’, Studium, 8–9 (1934).
73. Ibid.
74. Guido Gonella, ‘Tra la vita e il libro: I seguaci del califfo Omar’, Studium,
4 (1934).
114 J. DAGNINO
75. C. Valente, ‘Sforzi conciliativi dei cattolici tedeschi’, Azione fucina, 14

June 1936.
76. K. Vondung, ‘National Socialism as a Political Religion: Potentials and
Limits of an Analytical Concept’, Totalitarian Movements and Political
Religions, 6/1 (2005), 89–90.
77. ‘Razzismo’, Azione fucina, 3 June 1934. This article is an excerpt of a
speech given by Professor Pasquale Pennisi at the FUCI’s 1934 cultural
week celebrated at Udine.
78. On von Hildebrand, see A. von Hildebrand, The Soul of a Lion: The Life
of Dietrich Von Hildebrand (Ft. Collins, 2000).
79. Dietrich von Hildebrand, ‘Lo spirito del Nazionalsocialismo’, Studium,
11 (1935).
80. Ibid.
81. Ibid.
82. Miles, ‘Come mai può esser questo?’, Studium, 5 (1934).
83. M. Bendiscioli, Neopaganesimo Razzista (Brescia, 1937) and idem, La
Germania Religiosa Nel III Reich. Conflitti Religiosi e Culturali nella
Germania Nazista (Brescia, 1936). On Bendiscioli see, M. Marcocchi,
P. Prodi and M. Taccolini, Mario Bendiscioli. Intellettuale Cristiano
(Brescia, 2004); Mario Bendiscioli Storico. Convegno di Studio (Brescia,
2003); and M. Giuliani (ed.), Mario Bendiscioli. Un percorso di esperienze
e studio nella cristianità del ‘900 (Brescia, 1994).
84. M. Bendiscioli, Neopaganesimo razzista, 5. On Bendiscioli as historian of
the Third Reich, see, above all, E. Signorini, ‘Mario Bendiscioli e la storia
del nazismo’ in Mario Bendiscioli Storico, 73–105.
85. K. Poewe, New Religions, 31.
86. Ibid., 4–6.
87. M. Bendiscioli, Neopaganesimo Razzista, 31.
88. M. Bendiscioli, La Germania Religiosa, 74.
89. On the importance of celebrations and the new calendar see M. Burleigh,
Sacred Causes, 110–12 and K. Vondung, ‘National Socialism as a Political
Religion…’, 92.
90. K. Vondung, Magie und Manipulation: Ideologischer Kult und politische
Religion des Nationalsozialismus (Gottingen, 1971), 85–7, 167–68.
91. M. Bendiscioli, La Germania Religiosa, 79.
92. R. J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power, 250.
93. M. Bendiscioli, Neopaganesimo Razzista, 28. The fucini could only be
delighted when Rosenberg’s book was put in the Index of forbidden
books in 1934. See ‘Rassegne’, Azione fucina, 11 March 1934.
94. M. Bendiscioli, Neopaganesimo Razzista, 29–30.
95. Ibid., 16.
96. Ibid., 43.
97. Ibid., 15–6.

98. Ibid., 45.
99. For the importance of this encyclical and the growing awareness of Pius
XI of the commonality between Bolshevism, National Socialism, and
Italian Fascism as totalitarian movements and regimes, see, for example,
E. Fattorini, Pio XI, Hitler e Mussolini. La solitudine di un papa (Turin,
2007), 124–38; Y. Chiron, Pie XI, 363–70; and F. Bouthillon, La
Naissance de la Mardité. Une théologie politique à l’age totalitaire: Pie XI
(1922–1939) (Strasbourg, 2001), 269–88.
100. Letter encyclical Mit brennender sorge, in Acción Católica Española,
Colección de Encíclicas, 359.
101. Ibid., 366.
102. Ibid., 370.
103. Igino Righetti to Vittorino Veronese, 24 April 1937, in Archivio del
Movimento Laureati, b, ‘1937 n.1’.
104. Ibid.
105. For the crisis, see, for example, M. Casella, Stato e Chiesa in Italia dalla
Conciliazione alla riconciliazione (1929–1931) (Lecce, 2005), 273–456;
J. F. Pollard, The Vatican and Italian Fascism, 1929–1932. A study in
conflict (Cambridge, 1985), 133–66; and Chiesa, Azione Cattolica e
Fascismo nel 1931 (Rome, 1983).
106. Non Abbiamo bisogno in Acción Católica Española, Colección de Encíclicas,
895 and 896–897.
107. Ibid., 899.
108. G. Miccoli, ‘Chiesa cattolica e totalitarismi’ in V. Ferrone (ed.), La Chiesa
Cattolica e il Totalitarismo (Florence, 2004), 1–26, and D. Menozzi and
R. Moro, ‘Conclusioni’ in D. Menozzi and R. Moro, Cattolicesimo e
totalitarismo. Chiese e culture religiose tra le due guerre mondiali (Italia,
Spagna, Francia) (Brescia, 2004), 373–87.
109. P. G. Zunino, Interpretazione e memoria del fascismo. Gli anni del regime
(Rome and Bari, 2000), 143–69.
110. P. Scoppola, ‘Gli orientamenti di Pio XI e Pio XII sui problemi della soci-
età contemporanea’, in M. Guasco, E. Guerriero and F. Traniello (eds.),
I Cattolici nel Mondo Contemporaneo (1922–1958) (Milan, 1996), 139.
111. Adriano Bernareggi, ‘La moralità nella professione’, Studium, 3–4
(1935).
112. ‘Personalità e disciplina’, Azione fucina, 25 April 1937. This was a speech
delivered by Mgr. Pasquale Pennisi at the spring meeting of that year
celebrated in Reggio Calabria.
113. P. Zama, Fascismo e Religione, (Milan, 1923), 12–3.
114. G. Bottai, Incontri, (Milan, 1943), 123.
116 J. DAGNINO
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.
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
FUCI Ideas in the 1930s: The Search

for a New Spiritual Order
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

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_7
120 J. DAGNINO
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
fuelled by a heroic conception of life, a Christianity that was not pas-

sively lived or restricted to closed and passive formulae, but which was
passionately experienced as a ‘spiritual exaltation … a heroic and integral
conception of the Catholic life’,9 capable of uncovering and utterly fulfill-
ing every human faculty. As the influential Giulio Bevilacqua expressed it,
‘religion can only reconquer the modern soul through a complete assault
that reconquers all the senses, all the forces of man … in order to gradually
lead him back to the divine order’.10
It is clear then that in an age of totalitarianism and mass politics, the
Catholic Church accentuated its features as a total and all-embracing insti-
tution, where a religiosity of militancy and mobilisation predominated. It
was a complex process through which it defended itself, competed and
at times imitated some of the external aspects of the totalitarian experi-
ments present on the continent. Nevertheless, it would be a conceptual
mistake to speak of interwar Italian Catholicism as just another form of
totalitarianism, since it did not share the features that characterised mod-
ern totalitarianism,11 even though, as has been seen, many interwar Italian
Catholics spoke freely of a Catholic ‘totalitarianism’.
However, what distinguished the FUCI’s brand of spirituality from
other branches of the Catholic Action of the period was its insistence on
the need for an active role to be played by the lay faithful. The laity could
not be a passive body that somewhat mechanically and unreflectively was
to be mobilised by the organisational techniques of the age.12 On the
contrary, it had to be persuaded and convinced, rationally won over to
the merits of Catholic truth. The main reason for this emphasis lay pre-
cisely in the intellectual nature and responsibilities of the organisation.
Nevertheless, the purpose of the FUCI was not to create restricted intel-
lectual elites who lived apart and beyond the vicissitudes of daily life. The
ideal fucino would have to possess a serious religious culture and be able
to enter into a fruitful dialogue with the most pressing needs of the day,
even those that seemed to be most banal. In essence, however, the main
goal that the Catholic intellectual had to set himself was to Catholicise
intellectual, professional, and civil life.13 In the formidable task of bringing
the intellectual world back to the truths of Catholic teaching, the fucini
increasingly insisted on the careful respect that had to be accorded to
every man and woman in the effort to evangelise them. Every contact had
to be ‘personal, free, respectful of the autonomy of everyone’14 so that a
true and conscious conversion would be brought about. Of paramount
importance in this line of spirituality was the cultivation of the values of
122 J. DAGNINO
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
by some in the organisation, especially in the field of ecclesiology. More

than anything else, there was the deeply felt need to overcome the per-
ceived split between the world of science, religion, and philosophy—
and life in general. They continually deplored the distance that existed
between scholarly production in the field of the religious sciences and
the concrete practice of everyday Catholicism by the millions of faithful.
Moreover, they were concerned about the limited contact that existed in
interwar Europe between the religious disciplines and those other fields
of study, or ‘profane’ culture and the modern world and its needs in gen-
eral. This was felt to be particularly urgent in the case of Italy, where
religious studies, to some extent attributable to the shocks produced after
modernism, were considered by the fucini to be especially outmoded.
They continually called for a theology and religious culture that was ‘less
underdeveloped, less provincial, fresher and more alive, more sensitive to
the movements of the human spirit’.22 In an emblematic article written by
the ecclesiastical assistant Emilio Guano,23 while rejecting the doctrinal
deviations of modernism, he presented positively modernism’s effort to
‘force the people dedicated to religious studies to look beyond themselves,
to take conscience of the world that surrounded them’ as well as a ‘sense
of deeper intimacy’.24 Guano propounded a renewed contact between life
and the Christian truth, as well as a profound renewal of the religious
sciences. Following in the footsteps of eminent foreign theologians such
as Guardini, Tillman, and Bartmann, he praised the new developments
in religious studies that tended to use historical research as an ancillary
tool for the study of theology that served the ultimate purpose of ren-
dering theological research and studies ‘accessible to the men who today
are alive’,25 in an effort to render the Christian message to contemporary
society alive and vivacious. The Catholic doctrine, thus understood, stood
as a vital force, capable of organising, vivifying, and uplifting the modern
world. In this respect, Guano had harsh words for what he considered to
be the nature of religious research in contemporary Italy: ‘Too little does
our religious culture know what is the culture, mentality, the anxieties and
needs of the civil world of this, our twentieth century.’26 In making this
critique, Guano was denouncing what he perceived as a religious culture
that contented itself with the presentation of abstract formulae, a self-
contained and cold culture comfortably embedded in rigid schemes that
made no effort to engage in a lively dialogue with the dynamic contem-
porary world. In this sense, the FUCI—and Emilio Guano in particular—
made a conscious and valuable effort with the aim of rendering Italian
124 J. DAGNINO
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
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
but with an ‘intelligent and active participation’.43 Above all, liturgy

was the way through which the supernatural manifested itself and acted
upon man, forming the conscience of men and women and their sense of
belonging to the same spiritual community.
The Contribution of Emilio Guano

The Genoese priest was unquestionably one of the most original and influ-
ential voices in interwar Italy with regard to religious studies, particularly
in the field of ecclesiology. We have already seen how in an influential
article entitled ‘Verità e vita’ (‘Truth and Life’), the ecclesiastical assistant
propounded a living religious culture, capable of offering answers to the
most pressing needs of the day, and how he rescued some of the driving
forces of modernism while rejecting its doctrinal deviations. Additionally,
mention has been made of Guano’s effort to introduce, sometimes for the
first time in the Italian context, the latest theological ideas from abroad,
especially from France and Germany.44 During those years, Germany was
experiencing a lively and fecund renewal of Catholic life in general. This
revival had its centres in the Benedictine abbey of Maria Laach led by
Ildefons Herwegen, the Catholic Theology Faculty at the University of
Tubingen, and the Akademiker Verband. Some of the principal intellectu-
als leading this revival were Romano Guardini, Fritz Tilmann, and Karl
Adam.45 All of these institutions and authors were well known by Guano,
both through his reading and frequent visits to Germany. But his attention
and theological interests were not limited to Catholic authors. He contin-
ually admonished the fucini to ‘open the horizons to men and movements
that are not Catholic or Christian’.46 He also displayed an interest in the
most distinguished voices of liberal Protestantism such as Karl Barth and
his movement of renewal that he praised as ‘embarked on an exquisitely
supernatural path’.47 Similarly, despite the dominant and often suffocat-
ing neo-Thomist intellectual climate of the time, perceived by many as
the sole philosophy and theology that Catholics could derive inspiration
from, Guano encouraged Italian Catholic intellectuals to go beyond the
teachings of Thomas Aquinas in philosophy, in an effort to appreciate
the latest philosophical currents of the day. In this sense, it was indicative
of the ecclesiastical assistant’s attempt to reach out to modern men and
women that he praised some aspects of some modern philosophers, such
as Bergson and Heidegger, as examples of how ‘philosophy seems to want
to become something more human’.48 Equally remarkable for the times
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,
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
Literature and New Models of Sainthood
The arts, especially literature, were viewed by the fucini as privileged

agents for a new and modern spiritual order. Art for art’s sake was firmly
rejected for its aloofness from concrete reality and its supposedly bour-
geois underpinnings.69 In a now famous article, the Catholic writer Carlo
Bo cogently synthesised the new drive to reality that literature had to
follow in interwar Italy if it was to be a just and dignified expression of
130 J. DAGNINO
modernity. True literature could not be considered as an evasion or mere

hobby to be pursued for the sole gratification of the imagination. It had to
be an engagement with life—perhaps the most serious of modern times—
for ‘our self-knowledge and the life of the conscience’, and thus there
could be ‘no opposition between literature and life’ as both were essen-
tially ‘instruments of self-search and thus of truth’.70 The written text had
to capture the dynamism of modern life and modern literature was praised
for its ambition of touching the ‘essentiality of things’.71 Literature was
to be conceived as a medium ‘to live with our times without mortifying
them and feeling their eagerness to construct and elevate … and their
yearning for the new order’.72 In this realm, many Catholic intellectu-
als followed the more general developments of Italian literature, most
noticeably the shift to the novel and realism as the preferred forms of
representation, closely linked to visions of national identity.73 However,
they did not espouse a realist literature that would merely depict reality
in a photographic and passive manner. Much in unison with Fascism’s
espoused ‘spiritual realism’, they endorsed a realism that would transform
reality and purify it of its degeneracies. New realism should ‘reinvent our
heroes’ and unveil the ‘profoundest roots’ of life.74 A good example of this
therapeutic realism is visible in the interest paid to American literature and
culture.75 Among Catholics there was the tendency to identify economic
liberalism with capitalism as a whole and America as the mother and purest
example of a modern capitalist society. Capitalism had been the focus of a
major campaign of demonisation in the interwar period. Unquestionably,
in the context of the 1920s and 1930s, after the 1929 New York crash,
brought about a radicalisation in this process. Indeed, for many, 1929
came to be perceived as a truly epochal year, marking the Lateran Pacts
and the supposed historical overcoming of capitalism.76 Capitalism was
to blame for the disastrous economic and social reality in which millions
of Europeans lived, for the destruction of spiritual and moral values and
the cult of money and appearances. Capitalism became in many respects
the embodiment of the modernity that so badly needed to be fought and
converted. Predictably, the American mentality was summarily damned
as the pseudo-civilisation where there was ‘the conviction that success is
the sole criterion of merit’, where ‘money tends to be the only measure
of intelligence and virtue and where simplicity reduces life to exterior-
ity’.77 Furthermore, America was depicted as the quintessential ‘machine
civilisation’ that was so detested, a place where the ‘great wealth is cause
of the most obscure misery, and the abundance of products makes people
die of hunger; this very developed civilisation from a technological point

of view, is pushing a multitude of men to the limits of barbarity, despair
and delinquency’.78 America was, in sum, a place where ‘God is strangely
ignored’.79 Yet again, and despite the perceived and imagined decadence
and disruption, some Catholics were able to see and embrace the miser-
ies, weaknesses and despairs and, from within them, isolate moments of
beauty and human gleam in a sort of Baudelairian modernity that rescued
the heroic and often hidden aspects of modern life.80 A good example is
provided by Catholic reactions to the descriptions of New York offered by
the writer John Dos Passos in his novels. The city is presented in a schizo-
phrenic dynamic, living in a never-stopping drunkenness of the senses,
where people ‘live one day of comfort and ten of misery’.81 Yet, amid
the deviance and corruption, the Catholic contributor focused on one of
the American writer’s characters—Jimmy Herf—who, despite everything,
conserved a ‘poetic loyalty’ to his homeland and, like a modern Don
Quixote, out of the anonymous greatness of his spirit, took upon himself,
like an urban Jesus, ‘all the suffering and sadness of this immense city’82
in a redeeming act that penetrated the ephemeral nature of urban life and
glimpsed at its eternal potential. The columnist went on to decipher the
message enclosed in another representative American writer of the age,
Sinclair Lewis, and one of his stories of a mechanic and the daughter of a
well-off bourgeois couple. Its main contribution was the portrayal of the
superficialities and snobbism of the ‘fat American bourgeoisie’83 that ren-
dered life artificial, conformist and effeminate, and the stress put on the
longing for a return to a magical nature where man could blossom once
again. Dos Passos and Lewis spoke to the hearts of contemporary youth
in their ‘criticism of antiquated values and in their search of new tenets for
individual and collective life’,84 that is, a new life that could put aside the
spurious and reclaim the central role of an essential element of modernity,
that is, the development of the self and its quest for authenticity.
It is in this light that one should see the significant modifications in
religious beliefs, behaviours, and forms of sainthood that took place in
interwar Italy. Responding to the mood of the times, these Catholic intel-
lectuals strove for a religious life that was at the same time dynamic, vital,
and youthful. The fulcrum of these developments was the primacy attrib-
uted to the modern ideal of the development of the self, the thrust to
consolidate the dignity of the individual religious conscience, within a new
conception of the church as community. Indeed, during the 1930s young
Italian Catholics expressed a strong aversion to religious s uperficiality and
132 J. DAGNINO
unfounded social conventions in religious behaviour. Additionally, they

energetically snubbed the perceived attempts at reducing religion to a
moral code, a ‘bourgeois’ etiquette of desired urban comportment that
excluded ‘everything that is beautiful and strong outside of it’.85 In sum,
they campaigned against a religion based on prudishness and bigotry that
revolved around the safety and comfortableness of acquired habits, that
rendered Catholicism ‘formal and not substantial, apparent and not effec-
tive’, that eschewed the intricacies and torments of a heroic life, debasing
it to an ‘insufferable Pharisaism’.86
Sanford Schwartz has argued that at the heart of the modernist aim of
the regeneration of culture there lay the belief that civilisation had covered
up what was most vital and essential to human existence, hence embed-
ding the yearning to uncover and liberate the original and primal forces of
men.87 Although his work is mainly concerned with the aesthetic world, it
can be usefully applied to interwar Catholics in their pursuit of an authen-
tic, spontaneous, and cathartic religious experience. The main aim was
the building of the individual religious personality. Faith and life were not
to be considered given states of mind that somehow mechanically and
unconsciously pushed man through the years, but rather as a struggle, a
constant challenge in the conquest of one’s own intimacy. Youth was con-
sequently a powerful symbol of fortitude, purity, and moral strength, and
Catholics depicted youths as ‘avant-garde groups’, ‘tenacious construc-
tors who see beyond the narrow horizons of bellied and status-seeking
men’.88 True religious experience unfettered the ‘inner joy of men’, a joy
that was the ‘liberating effect of the possession of the Truth’.89 Religion
was something to be experienced if it was to be fecund, and, thus, had to
embrace the paradoxes and contradictions of modern life. A new religious
attitude was needed in order to flourish in contemporary society and stand
up to its very fluid nature, a mixture of spontaneity and the transcendence
of Catholic dogma that youth was particularly suited to achieve through
its ‘marvellous blend of juvenile exuberance and moral seriousness’.90
This trend can be traced through the considerable attention bestowed
on Giovanni Papini, the most celebrated convert in interwar Italy and
sometimes contributor to the FUCI press. In 1921 he had published his
very personal Storia di cristo, unquestionably the most widely read reli-
gious book of the time. It sold more than 40,000 copies in 1921 alone,
and its Florentine publisher had to release a third edition the same year.
The most striking feature of the book is the scarce attention paid to the
institutional dimensions of the church, preferring to portray Catholicism
as a personal encounter with Christ, as a journey, an adventure with highs

and lows, torments and surprises that led to the uncovering of the ‘real’
and heroic nature of man. Speaking of the modern intention of his work,
Papini wrote in the preface: ‘To the author of the present book it seems
that … in the thousands of books that narrate the life of Christ there
is not one which seeks instead of dogmatic proofs and learned explana-
tions, a message adapted to the soul and the longings of our century.’91
Furthermore, Papini’s Christ was intensely human, immersed in the trou-
bles of his time, appealing to the ordinary and worldly man, who, were
he to accept Christ’s invitation to his spiritual voyage, would be rewarded
by the long-lasting freedom that comes with authentic self-knowledge.
His highly personal and mystical religious experience was what rendered
Papini such an appealing religious figure, so much so that the fucino
Filippo Piemontese had no doubts that ‘Papini is truly, for us, the greatest
and most significant writer of the Italy of today’.92 Piemontese went on
to rescue the ‘existentialist’ Christianity of the Tuscan writer and his non-
conformist spiritual mentality that did not shrink from miseries and tor-
ments. Although Papini was 53 at the time, he was, nevertheless, depicted
as representing the essence of youth––youth understood as ‘a perenni-
ally tormented evolution, the ever operative and overcoming youth of the
soul’, his ‘inexhaustible wave of youth that constantly refreshes his spirit’
that implied a ‘continuous enrichment of experiences’. In sum, youth was
defined as alertness, consciousness, and development of the self in contrast
to adults who led artificial lives and ‘peacefully slept through their exis-
tences’.93 Additionally, there was the awareness that in order for religion
to be vibrant and attractive in modern times, it had to be aesthetically
appealing and develop the creativity of personality.
The intellectuals of Catholic Action proclaimed the need for a ‘new
conception of spirituality and sainthood’—a Christian vitalism that could
express the ‘desire that burns in us to infuse Christianity in all forms of life,
including the more banal’, sharply distinguishing the need to overcome
traditional forms of religious asceticism, noting ‘that in the past there
was the tendency to achieve sainthood by renouncing the more material
expressions of life … and thus burning the bridges between Christianity
and the most common realities’.94 The new sainthood would, additionally,
be open to all men: ‘The true spiritual style of the twentieth century is the
youthful sainthood among the laity … that is born amid the daily mean-
ness of the life of the world and, in them and because of them, grows and
becomes robust.’95
134 J. DAGNINO
The drive to new forms of sainthood and religious awareness can be

further understood through the attention given to other two emblem-
atic figures in interwar Italy, namely Giovanni Bosco and Pier Giorgio
Frassati. Don Bosco (1815–88) was canonised by Pius XI in April 1934
and was one of the most popular saints in Mussolini’s Italy. He had been
the founder of the order of the Salesians and had excelled as a man of
action and as an extremely efficient organiser, exercising great influence,
especially among the youth of his age. What made him most appealing to
the FUCI was that his ‘was not a sanctity of personal and isolated purifica-
tion … but a very human sanctity’96 that had ‘synthesised all that was great
of his age’ and, very significantly, ‘in harmony with the speedy rhythm of
modern life’.97 Don Bosco had realised that ‘the new times demand new
measures’98 and was, hailed by some as a romantic in the sense that he
rebuked the ‘arrogant abstractions of reason … in favour of the creation
of the concrete man’.99
Pier Giorgio Frassati (1901–25)100 had been an active member of the
Turin FUCI branch and in the Conferences of St. Vincent de Paul—an
organisation devoted to bringing spiritual and material relief to the most
deprived sectors of society. His example reflected how irremediably insuf-
ficient the models of the medieval monk living alone in his cell engaged in
contemplation were, or a Thomas Aquinas aloof from reality writing his
Summa. Indeed Frassati, as an example of a contemporary lay Catholic,
was so attractive because he was not ‘an intellectual, that is, a man devoted
to placing his entire life at the service of his thought, but rather a man of
action, committed to using his thought in the service of his life’.101 His
sanctity lay precisely in his simplicity and the ordinariness of his daily life,
so removed from the pompous ‘great style sainthood’, his teaching ‘sim-
ple, linear, efficient’.102 In sum, spirituality in the twentieth century had
to be—as was the case in Frassati—essentially and above all ‘applied’.103
Among these Catholics there was the recognition that the search for
action and personal regeneration were the distinctive elements of the
modern age in a dramatic dilemma between the ‘search of a new life or
death’.104 Furthermore, they warned against the fallacy that proclaimed the
‘irreconcilability of modernity and Christianity’.105 Modernity was about
paradoxes, contradictions, and the ephemeral, but these Catholics, instead
of hiding in trenches or anathemas, enthusiastically engaged with the flu-
idity of modern times. Action and experimentation were possible precisely
because of the transcendent character of Catholic dogma that permitted
one to experiment so freely. Paraphrasing Marx’s famous d ictum, these
Catholics believed in offering an alternative form of modernity, one where

everything that was solid did not melt into air or, as they confidently pro-
claimed, ‘there has never existed a Christianity that is not modern’.106
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).
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
giovanile cattolico nel primo dopoguerra (1919–1939)’, in L. Pazzaglia

(ed.), Chiesa, cultura e educazione, 217–86.
13. Giulio Bevilacqua, ‘La qualità prima, la quantità poi’, Studium, 3 (1939).
Bevilacqua went on to note how the ‘conquest of the world of intelli-
gence is the first and most urgent problem to be faced by the modern
apostolate’.
14. Giulio Bevilacqua, ‘Note di azione pastorale per le classi colte. Pregiudizi
ed illusioni’, Studium, 4 (1939).
15. Franco Costa, ‘La carità nella vita fucina’, Azione fucina, 8 December
1935. On Costa’s role and importance he gave to the virtue of charity
and the building of the interior personality see R. Moro, ‘Franco Costa
vice-assistente della FUCI (1933–1955)’ in Don Franco Costa. Per la sto-
ria di un sacerdote attivo nel laicato cattolico italiano. Studi e testimoni-
anze (Rome, 1992), 174ff.
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid.
18. V. Branca, ‘La formazione fucina’, Azione fucina, 1 March 1936.
19. Guido Zappa, ‘Amicizia cristiana’, Azione fucina, 19 September–3
October 1937.
20. Franco Costarelli, ‘La nostra amicizia’, Azione fucina, 10 January 1937.
21. Franco Costa, ‘Valore della vita associativa’, Azione fucina, 26 March–2
April 1939.
22. E. Guano, ‘Verità e vita’, Studium, 7–8 (1935).
23. Emilio Guano (1900–1970) was ordained in 1922. In 1926 he became
the ecclesiastical assistant of the male branch of the FUCI in his native
Genoa. At the same time, he taught at the local Seminary of Genoa,
where he lectured on ecclesiastical history, sacred scriptures and patrol-
ogy. In 1935 he was designated national vice ecclesiastical assistant of the
FUCI. In 1943 he was nominated national vice ecclesiastical assistant of
the Movimento Laureati and in July of that year participated at the gather-
ing in Camaldoli, from where would emerge the famous document Codice
di Camaldoli. After the Second World War he would play a leading part
in the reconstitution of Pax Romana, the international organisation of
Catholic intellectuals. In 1962 he was designated by John XXIII as bishop
of Livorno. During the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) he partici-
pated in the elaboration of the document Gaudium et spes, to which he
contributed his vast knowledge of ecclesiology. On Emilio Guano, see, for
example, L. Rolandi, Emilio Guano. Religione e cultura nella Chiesa itali-
ana del Novecento (Catanzaro, 2001); M. L. Paronetto Valier (ed.),
Emilio Guano. Coscienza/Libertà/Responsabilità (Rome, 1998);
A. Ablondi, A. Ballestrero and M. Marcocchi, Don Guano. Vescovo Teologo
(Rome, 1992); and Emilio Guano. Uomo della Parola (Rome, 1977).

25. Ibid.
26. Ibid.
27. See Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b’Bologna’. Guano praised
Guardini ‘as one of the most representative figures of the needs to bridge
the gap between truth and life’. See E. G, ‘Segnalazioni’, Studium, 7–8
(1935). Romano Guardini (1885–1968), the son of Italian parents, lived
most of his life in Germany. He was probably one of the most creative
theologians in the twentieth century, who anticipated Vatican II’s com-
mitment to read ‘the sign of the times’. Such well-known theologians as
Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner and Pope Benedict XVI have
acknowledged their intellectual and religious indebtedness to him. On
the importance of Romano Guardini, see, for example, R.A. Krieg,
Romano Guardini. A Precursor of Vatican II (Indiana, 2001); and
A. López Quintás, Romano Guardini, maestro de vida (Madrid, 1998).
28. For example: La Vie Intellectuelle, La Vie Catholique, Revue Apologetique,
Etudes Carmelataines, Documentation Catholique, La Revue
Hebdomadaire, Stimmen der Zeit, Theologie und Glaube, Catholic Times,
among many others. See Archivio del Movimento laureati, b. ‘1934 n.2–3’.
29. In 1935 Guano visited Switzerland, Austria and Germany. In 1937 he
visited France. See letter from Guano to Righetti, 8 August 1937, in
Archivio del Movimento laureati, b. ‘1936 n.1–2’.
30. ‘Per un Cristianesimo costruttivo’, Azione fucina, 26 May 1935.
31. Giovanni Getto, ‘L’anima del apostolato’, Azione fucina, 28 January
1936.
32. Emilio Guano, ‘Teoria e pratica’, Azione fucina, 13 June 1937.
33. Ibid. See also Ana Maria Ferrero, ‘Intellettualismo e vita cristiana’, Azione
fucina, 4 July 1937, where she expresses her ‘disgust for the abstract
theory that does not produce action’ and against those that ‘enclosed
themselves in a world of ideas that have no force’.
34. Fausto Montanari, ‘Gesù Cristo e il novecento’, Studium, 5 (1938).
35. Miles (Giulio Bevilacqua), ‘L’uomo nuovo’, Studium, 4 (1934).
36. Franco Costa, ‘Essere lieti’, Azione fucina, 21 November 1937.
37. Ibid.
38. See, above all, G. B. Montini, ‘L’elemento personale nella religione’,
Azione fucina, 8 April 1934.
39. Claudio Righini, ‘L’educazione degli affetti’, Azione fucina, 8 August
1937.
40. For a history of the liturgical movement in these years, see the excellent
study by M. Paiano, Liturgia e Società nel Novecento. Percorsi del movi-
mento liturgico di fronte ai processi di secolarizzazione (Rome, 2000).
138 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.
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.
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
Building the New Order, 1933–39
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

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_8
142 J. DAGNINO
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
an equal basis truth and error, all justified by a grotesque deformation of

the principle of tolerance. In this way, democracy became impotent and
utterly unable to prevent the gravest political errors of the day, whether it
be Nazism or, especially, communism.5
Events in contemporary France and Spain help to explain to a large
extent the negative views expressed by the vast majority of the Catholic
intellectuals on the subject of parliamentary democracy. France’s Third
Republic was almost unanimously condemned for its frequent political
scandals, cases of alleged corruption, political violence and continual
social strife.6 For some in the federation, what once had been a bulwark
of Catholicism was now prey to radicals, republicans, communists, and
Freemasons, who were eroding the true identity of the nation and its civic
and religious foundations.7 France, perhaps more than any other coun-
try, seemed to prove to the intellectuals of the federation the ‘natural’
tendency of democracy to become a dictatorship of the existing political
parties, which, with their own limitless ambitions, captured the state for
their own private ends without regard for the common good. What was
additionally worse was that in France the government was in the hands of
‘irreligious and incompetent men who persecute the Church’.8 For the
Jesuit Enrico Rosa there was no doubt that the Popular Front headed
by Léon Blum was an ‘anti-Christian republic’9 and that the country was
experiencing a ‘social apostasy even more radical and satanic than that
of the eighteenth century’.10 Matters were aggravated in the eyes of the
Jesuit by the signing of the French and Soviet agreement in 1935, which,
according to the vehement and sometimes blunt Jesuit, was the product of
‘the Freemasonic and Hebraic power’.11 Indeed, during the 1930s many
in the federation tended to associate democracy with Freemasonry, Jewry,
and plutocracy, as well as seeing it as the antechamber of communism
and civil war. Enrico Rosa did not spare personal attacks on Blum, whom
he blamed for surrendering the once powerful Catholic nation into the
hands of Bolshevism.12 Indeed, Rosa went on to support some aspects of
the paramilitary organisation Croix de Feu as a viable political option that
stood for the values of order and authority, amidst the social chaos that he
perceived in the Third Republic.13
Finally, another cause of serious preoccupation in the ranks of the FUCI
was constituted by the politics of the main tendue in France, that is, the
offer on the part of the French communists led by Maurice Thorez to col-
laborate politically with some sectors of French Catholicism, an initiative
that initially seemed to attract many Catholics.14 In the eyes of the fucini,
144 J. DAGNINO
no compromise was possible with the communists, especially since they

viewed them—as we have seen—as representatives of a totalitarian political
religion that aimed at replacing the established religions with their own
version of an earthly paradise.15
A very similar and pessimistic view was expressed by the Italian intellec-
tuals during these years when it came to the case of Spain and its Second
Republic, Popular Front, and ensuing Civil War.16 The conflagration
served to further and consolidate the FUCI’s antidemocratic credentials
during these years. The Spanish Republic and Civil War seemed to confirm
to many in the association that contemporary democracy was not merely
anticlerical or agnostic, but rather that it tended increasingly to become
post-Christian in its nature and practices. This was reflected, for exam-
ple, in the expulsion of the Jesuits and the confiscation of their property
enacted by the Republican government.17 For others in the organisation,
one had to go back in the centuries to look for the roots of the current
Spanish crises. For Cesco Vian, for example, the current turmoil affect-
ing the peninsula was to be located in the second half of the seventeenth
century and ‘the poison of enlightened and encyclopedic rationalism’18
that had tended to erase the true and ‘natural’ Catholic character of Spain
as represented by its historical glories, such as the Catholic kings, Saint
Thérèse, and Saint Ignatius of Loyola, among many others. The Spanish
Second Republic, in the eyes of these Catholic intellectuals, had proven to
be deeply anticlerical, even Masonic in its inspiration and practices. This
view was further boosted by Pius XI’s encyclical Dilectissima nobis of June
1933, in which the pope energetically denounced what he perceived as
attacks on the position of the Catholic Church, clergy, and its religious
orders.19 For the fucini, what was at stake in the Iberian Peninsula was a
gigantic struggle for the fate of Catholic civilisation. The world was witness-
ing a massive social apostasy and moral corruption that struck at the very
heart of Spain’s ‘true’ and ‘natural’ identity as a bastion of Catholicism.20
The Spanish Civil War presented the destructive force of political religions
in action, in this case the damaging nature of Bolshevism and its militant
atheists, with the burning of churches, profanation of sacred objects, and
assassination of clergy.21 What was additionally disquieting about commu-
nism was its alleged universal vocation, and in this sense democracy was
continually accused of opening the path to the communists.22
In sum, for the fucini democracy was an outmoded and dated form
of government. In response, these Catholics came up with the idea—as
did Catholics elsewhere on the continent—of a Catholic bloc, a grouping
of Catholic-inspired countries that followed closely the directives of the

Vatican for social order. In this they regarded themselves as following Pius
XI’s directives for a just social order, already established as early as 1922
with his encyclical Ubi arcano, in which the pontiff vehemently defended
the restoration of all things in the reign of Christ and the creation of a
true society of nations in part reminiscent of the one supposed to have
existed during the Middle Ages and in sharp contrast to the League of
Nations and its alleged agnosticism. It was a vision where civil society
once again would have to recognise the predominance and authority of
the church when it came to societal matters.23 Additionally, they envisaged
these states as authoritarian ones, authoritarianism being the sole system
capable of maintaining the unity and peace of social life. In this vision of a
‘religious authoritarianism’, the reaction against parliamentary democracy
and the liberal conception of the state and the economy formed part of a
rejection of the ideological tenets of atomistic individualism, which would
be replaced by a new system where there was once again an absolute and
objective truth and authority.24 Furthermore, this new order would bring
about—or so they thought—a new kind of civilisation where the primacy
of the spiritual would reign. If the nineteenth century had been charac-
terised by its materialism, secularism, and anticlericalism, the twentieth
century would witness the predominance of religion and spirit. What was
additionally striking about these developments was the new-found sense
of optimism among European Catholics, a new assertiveness and energy
as witnessed by the proliferation of parades and pilgrimages as well as
the rapid expansion of Catholic Action and other lay associations.25 The
models for this kind of new international order were, as expected, Franco’s
Spain, Austria of Seipel and Dollfuss, Portugal of Salazar, and Hungary of
Admiral Horthy among other nations that claimed to derive the inspira-
tion for their actions from the papal social encyclicals. Significantly, as we
shall see particularly when we turn to the national order, this international
arrangement was not visualised by the Catholic students as a mere return
to medieval Christendom, when a rural and pre-industrial system had pre-
vailed. On the contrary, one can sense in the writings of these Catholic
intellectuals the excitement of witnessing the birth of a new world where
there was an element of mythification of the Middle Ages, but always as an
intellectual and emotional means of generating a leap forward. In short,
what the fucini foresaw was a modernised version of the confessional state,
where there was a distinction—but not separation—between Church and
State, and where the latter two were united in the life of each individual as
146 J. DAGNINO
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
these elements led the way to the establishment and reconstruction of

society that was underpinned by corporativist tenets. As Mario Bendiscioli
approvingly pointed out, under Seipel—and later Dollfuss—Austria had
moved from a parliamentary democracy towards a ‘corporativist organ-
isation of society and an authoritarian state based on the “democracy of
responsibility”’.35 Bendiscioli and others in the association admired in the
Austrian case what they perceived to be a deeper relationship between
leaders and followers, as well as a more profound and meaningful partici-
pation on the part of the citizens in the life of the nation, all within the
framework of a modern authoritarian state.
Additionally, Austria was destined to play a strategic role in international
politics in interwar Europe. For the fucini, ‘independent, corporativist and
Christian’ Austria was a moral and religious bulwark in Europe, immune
to the perils represented by Bolshevism and Nazism, an example to be fol-
lowed by other Christian nations.36 Indeed, Catholic Austria was depicted
by the students in the federation as embodying the total Catholicism they
so cherished, their social organisation inspired by a Christian worldview
that left nothing that was human untouched.37
Regenerating the National Order

Such ideas were not limited to the admiration of foreign models. The
FUCI also wanted to bring about changes within Italian society itself. In
particular, they believed that the church had to come to terms with the
advent and consolidation of an industrial and mass society. If prior to the
advent of Fascism the church had predominantly had to deal with a rural
milieu, after the Fascist experiment this had somewhat changed and so the
church needed to change as well. In this sense, the fucini of the 1930s
felt they inhabited a very different world from the experiences of political
and social Catholicism that had taken place before Fascism and during its
first years in power, most noticeably with regard to the Partito Popolare
of Luigi Sturzo. Indeed, the PPI had been to a large extent estranged
from the urban-industrial world, privileging instead its relationship with
the southern and mostly rural world, although it did have a presence in
some areas of northern Italy, such as Lombardy, but mostly in small towns.
It was precisely this limit to the Sturzian experience that the fucini, with
other Catholic groups, strove to overcome with varying degrees of success
during the 1930s.
148 J. DAGNINO
This transformation would have been unthinkable without the ‘new’

Catholic Action, of which the FUCI was a part, established by Pius
XI. During his pontificate, the official lay association was characterised by
a uniform territorial presence throughout the country, distinguished by its
strong spirit of active militancy and stalwart corporate identity, whether in
its female or male branches and, additionally, by a more robust presence
among the lower middle classes. In a sense, Catholic Action, during these
years had become a more urban and modern phenomenon38 which was
reflected in the engagement of the Catholic intellectuals and the church in
general with various facets of modernisation such as technology, cinema,
youth awareness, urbanisation, industrialisation, capitalism, and the new
and expanding role of the state and bureaucracy. The fucini confronted
these and other characteristics of the modern world with a spirit of opti-
mism that aimed, as has been emphasised in an earlier chapter, at the con-
struction of an alternative Catholic modernity, one where the fluidity and
open-endedness of modernity did not preclude the presence of a robust
religious dimension. Furthermore, the fucini were strongly influenced by
Fascist visions of modernity, ones that offered the fantasy of a mass soci-
ety that encouraged economic development without jeopardising national
traditions and social boundaries.39
The 1930s were also distinguished by a more robust presence of the
church in Italian society in general. This, of course, was greatly favoured
by the signing of the Lateran Pacts in February 1929. In institutions such
as schools, universities, the armed forces, and hospitals these were years
of a burgeoning influence of the Catholic credo in Italian national life.40
So too was the expanding influence and presence of Catholics in diverse
organs of the state. One has only to think of, for example, the Istituto
di Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI)—an organism created after the Great
Depression in 1929, where some fucini, including Sergio Paronetto, were
employed.41 It was a new type of presence, one in which the Church and
many of its associations adopted many of the modern means of commu-
nication—such as the radio, mass press, and the cinema—to develop and
diffuse their message.
The 1930s were also crucial years for the fucini and many in the
Catholic world for a ‘discovery’ of the institution of the state. This
reflected a broader reconciliation between Church and State. The Popular
Party of Don Sturzo—and to a large extent the FUCI of Montini and
Righetti—had displayed if not mistrust, then at least a certain distance
from the state. They had developed a liberal and instrumental conception
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
The World of the Professions,

Technology and Cinema
This quest for the religious nationalisation of the masses was accompanied
by a widespread feeling that they were witnessing the end of an epoch and
the beginning of a new age that would profoundly change and affect soci-
ety and the world in general.43 One of these changes that was deeply felt
by the intellectuals of Catholic Action was the intensifying of the speciali-
sation of knowledge and, thus, of the professions in interwar Europe. This
was especially pressing for an association like the FUCI, whose hallmark
was the attention bestowed on the intellectual and cultural world. There
was a sense that up until then, Italian Catholic Action had not made suf-
ficient efforts to engage with the world of intellectuals and liberal profes-
sions, an engagement that in an increasingly complex and urban society
was deemed to be all the more urgent. Igino Righetti lamented how intel-
lectuals had seemed to find ‘more tolerance than citizenship in Catholic
Action’.44 Righetti was convinced that Catholic Action had to become
more specialised in its structures if it wanted to meet the challenges of the
modern world and that specialisation had to be confronted optimistically,
‘not as division but as an organic and vital development’,45 and with the
150 J. DAGNINO
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
inspiration was not to be found in the world of guilds, artisans or in the

supposed edifying virtues of the Middle Ages which had seen ‘thousands
and thousands of lives sacrificed, thousands and thousands of serfs of the
glebe subjected to the harshest and most humiliating activities, lives with-
out liberty or hope’.54 Instead of a world created once and for all, with
rigid ‘natural’ laws for men to observe passively and with respect, technol-
ogy offered these Catholics the opportunity to go beyond the order of
nature, to experiment with God’s creation and, to continuously ‘remake
one’s own conception of the world’55 adapting to the fluidity of time and
space. Moreover, some, like Gustavo Colonetti, were convinced that mod-
ern civilisation, founded on the machine and technological progress, was
the best foundation for ‘the achievement of a greater social justice’.56
Technology was about novelty, about creating new qualities to enrich
the world. The technician, according to this viewpoint, was the quintes-
sential artist who responded to the demands of the age and his work repre-
sented the ultimate victory of the spirit over form.57 The beauty of modern
automobiles, for example, resided not merely in the amount of time that
could be saved through their use but, more specifically, in them being the
means of entering a new world, that was more complex and profound,
autonomous, and conscious.58 Some in the FUCI encouraged their mem-
bers to appreciate the splendour of the ‘airplane that lacerates the skies’ for
its intimate relationship with the creator.59 Electricity, new building devel-
opments, wide roads that gave a sense of infinity all contributed to this
new aesthetic and spiritual experience. Technology enhanced the notion
of life as a dynamic experience, as a canvas of more surprises than certain-
ties. If life was ‘novelty in continuous progress’,60 the unexpected was not
to be met with anxiety or despair, but as an opportunity for expanding the
development of the self.
This vision of the liberating power of technology went well beyond the
material world. It offered the possibility to plan and anticipate the lives of
future generations while changing historical memory; the significance of
epochs, of centuries of terrestrial life is presented under a new light. In this
way, technology was able, to some extent, to overcome the restrictions of
time and space, uniting on a symbolic plane the past, present, and future
in an ideal mankind.
Another important development in this field was the emphasis on per-
haps one of the most representative figures of the world of technology:
the engineer. Above all, in the perspective of the Catholic intellectuals,
engineers had to abandon the safety and comfort of their very specialised
152 J. DAGNINO
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
‘communication across spaces’,65 making obsolete many forms of social

etiquette and giving simultaneity to the present. In a sense, the telephone
made it possible to be in two places at the same time, expanding the spatial
scope of the present.66 The radio too made ‘instantaneous communica-
tions’ a reality, received in the same way and at the same time by the royal
family or a poor southern peasant.
The world of the cinema was another aspect of modernisation that the
Catholic intellectuals came to terms with during the 1930s. For Fascism
itself cinema constituted a central element in the indoctrination of values,
behaviour, and mentalities among Italians in the interwar period and in
their project of an indigenous modernity.67 The attitudes of the church
were mixed and ambiguous towards the new art form. The most official
pronouncement came in 1936 with Pius XI’s encyclical Vigilanti cura.
Catholics tended to focus on the religious and moral bankruptcy pre-
sented by cinema and thus emphasised the perceived dangers for the fam-
ily and individuals in the ease with which films depicted adultery, divorce,
and crime. At the same time, however, the pope and the national hierar-
chies could not fail to grasp the potential that cinema had in the era of
the masses to further Pius XI’s grandiose dreams for the restoration of all
things in Christ.68 As a consequence, by the end of the 1930s there were
546 parish cinemas on the peninsula.69 The formerly negative view of cin-
ema gradually gave way to a recognition that cinema was the ‘greatest and
most efficient means of influence in modern times’,70 and hence Italian
Catholic intellectuals called explicitly for a ‘modern critique’71 to exploit
its full potential and render possible the ‘transformation’ of values that was
necessary in the midst of a perceived crisis of civilisation.72
As might be expected, the films that were hailed as paradigms of true
cinema were the ones that highlighted the historical destiny of the nation
and the moral integrity of the Italian stirpe. Indeed, the Italian film indus-
try was the only one considered morally sound in contrast to the perils
offered by American films especially, many of which constituted a ‘direct
crime against the healthiness of the race’.73 In the perspective of the fucini,
Italian cinema had to mirror the ‘epic nature of our times’, the ‘moral
meaning of the Latin stirpe and the spiritual and social values that the
Roman spirit seeks to affirm in the whole world’.74 Against corrupt indi-
vidualism and crass materialism, many in the association favoured the so-
called ‘collective film’ that in their eyes gave harmony, hierarchy, and sense
to the otherwise amorphous masses, lifting up and edifying the people
in the blend of traditional and new values for which film was so suitable.
154 J. DAGNINO
Contrary to the Hollywood star system of neurotic egos and characters

removed from reality, the Catholic students advocated the creation of films
‘in which the individual is not the main actor, but the masses, in their unity
and multiplicity … only in the collective film can be truly expressed an idea
of universal order, whether social, political or moral’, noting proudly that
‘Italy has already offered two conspicuous examples with Camicia Nera
and Acciaio’.75
In Camicia Nera (Black Shirt), directed by Gioacchino Forzano, a per-
sonal friend of Mussolini who was awarded several prizes by the regime,
we see the merger between an exemplary rural tale and the national cause,
in the construction of a modern epic around the regime’s grandiose plans
for the Battle of Grain and the reclamation of the Pontine Marshes, pre-
sented also implicitly as a metaphor for the purification and rejuvenation
of the Italian people.76
The German Walter Ruttman was the director of Acciaio (Steel).77 The
film featured amateur actors in leading roles, its focal point being the lives
of steel workers. The fulcrum of the story was the character Mario, his
redemption from egotistical individualism, and his becoming a valuable
member of the national collective. It bolstered the native land and the
workplace with its sense of discipline as tools for personal regeneration.
Additionally, it illustrated the sense of confusion and aimlessness of a life
led by sheer self-interest, arguing that only in the national community can
man satisfy his yearning for totality. According to Emilio Cecchi, there
was an edifying parable at the heart of the film, whereby the ‘discipline of
labour and … the love for the native land, rescue Mario from the thresh-
old of liberty’,78 the kind of self-destructive freedom that had rendered
the world a standardised and amorphous reality. Walter Ruttman was con-
vinced that through the use of realist aesthetics in the film industry he
could exercise a liberating task in enabling men to escape everything arti-
ficial and alien, restoring them to their primeval and vigorous essentiality.
The fascination with cinema displayed by many Catholic intellectu-
als was largely due to its having created the ‘continuity of movement’.
Additionally, it offered a precious tool for the self-knowledge of men,
drawing them into a second and suggestive reality in which the audience
could ‘recognise themselves in their aspirations, miseries and struggles’,
whereby the ‘spectator becomes an actor’, all of which rendered the cin-
ema a most modern ‘school of life’.79
Corporativism and the Discovery of the State

as the Dawn of a New Epoch
Corporativism was at the heart of Fascist ideology and propaganda,

most noticeably between the end of the 1920s and mid-1930s, especially
among ‘left’ Fascists and the members of the Fascist University Groups.80
Furthermore, it was not a monolithic current of thought but rather pre-
sented diverse and sometimes contradictory versions and currents.81 In the
case of the Catholic world, it could speak of its own tradition of corpora-
tivism that went back to the medieval guilds and the robust tradition of
social Catholicism of the nineteenth century and the papal encyclicals con-
cerned with social order. However, what distinguished the FUCI’s brand
of corporativism in the 1930s from the corporativism espoused during the
Montini-Righetti era was, in the first place, the strong influence exercised
on it by Fascist ideas and the break with the tradition of social and politi-
cal Catholicism. They saw the corporate order as something new that was
emerging in interwar Europe.82 As Gino Ferroni proclaimed, corporativ-
ism was the greatest effort at reform in modern times.83 Moreover, the
corporate state was endowed not solely with restricted economic func-
tions, but was seen as a privileged agent of social justice as well as a more
general and somewhat vague way of spiritualising the workplace and the
masses in a post-liberal and post-materialist fashion. In this respect, corpo-
rativism was a potent myth that condensed the hopes of the dawning of a
new epoch, a new era in which the contradictions of liberalism and social-
ism would be resolved in a fairer and more humane societal organisation.
In sum, for the Catholic intellectuals, corporativism was the ‘great trend
of our age’,84 an ethical and social revolution that would resolve, to a large
extent, the anomies of actually existing modernity. This was fuelled by the
firm conviction among the intellectuals of the federation that capitalism
as a form of social, moral, and economic organisation had reached its end,
a feeling which became especially acute after the crisis of 1929, as Paolo
Emilio Taviani noted.85 In the eyes of Taviani and many in the federation,
what had been above all damaging in the capitalist system was the divorce
or division they perceived between economics and politics, between the
economy and ethics, as well as the affirmation of hedonism and the pri-
macy of capital over labour—all dichotomies that, presumably, would be
solved by the advent of the corporativist regime.86 Indeed, instead of the
human ‘jungle’ that liberalism had become, corporativism slowly came to
156 J. DAGNINO
appear to represent justice, order, material progress, the primacy of the

common good, and a spirit of social solidarity.
One of the aspects of corporativism that was most appealing to the
fucini and many other Catholic groups of the 1930s was its propounded
effort to unify and coordinate all the activities of the nation, putting an
end to the fractures of the liberal economy.87 This vision of a newly discov-
ered and superior moral unity for the economy was continually trumpeted
by Catholics and Fascists alike. Mussolini himself repeatedly spoke of how
the nascent corporate state realised ‘economic unity’ and how it had been
created for ‘the power and well-being of the Italian people’.88 At its heart,
corporativism, allegedly, took account of the vital fact, ignored both by
liberalism and socialism, that the world of production was of supreme
national interest.89
The projected new social order was further admired for the way in
which it supposedly moralised the workplace and the economy in general,
indeed for subordinating mere economics to ethics. In this fashion, corpo-
rativism supposedly permitted the blossoming of the potentialities of the
individual and a heightened sense of the nation through participation in a
collective enterprise.90 It considered labour as an intrinsically moral force
and a constituent element of the human personality and development of
the self.91 It furthered this ambition by recognising that men and women
were inherently social beings, their full capabilities fulfilled in collectivity.
The collective interest, from the perspective of the fucini, was not the
mere summation or aggregate of single and particular interests, in the
same fashion that society was not the sheer sum of the individuals com-
posing it. This was precisely the error that liberalism had committed and
had been, as was shown, so bitterly combatted by the Catholic intellectu-
als. Society and collectivity were qualitatively different entities. Moreover,
collectivity, far from crushing individual interests and potentials, nurtured
them and permitted their true realisation. The end result was suppos-
edly a harmonic construction, ‘even totalitarian’ in its nature,92 while not
neglecting the essence and rights of the individual but, on the contrary,
fortifying them in the corporativist construction. Moreover, corporativ-
ism appreciated that labour was not a simple merchandise but a tool of
self-fulfilment and personal growth, as well as a social and moral duty. In
this respect, many in the association felt the allure of corporativism as a
‘totalitarian organisation of labourers and employers’93 and of the corpo-
rate state as an all-embracing reality that was leading the nation into excit-
ing and uncharted territories. Furthermore, corporativism was praised for
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
accomplishment of social justice.107 For others, like the influential Sergio

Paronetto, autarchy constituted a proper ‘idea-myth’ in the Sorelian sense
of the concept.108 That is, a condensed image of reality that served to
inspire and mobilise large sectors of the population in a given direction. In
this perspective, autarchy offered itself as an instrument in the nationalisa-
tion of the masses, in being able to instil in them consciousness, discipline,
a sense of the collectivity, and national identity. In other words, through
autarchy the fucini were able to become more responsible and committed
Italian citizens.
The FUCI and Fascism in the Years of Totalitarian

Acceleration, 1935–1940
Emilio Gentile has written of a programmed process of totalitarian accel-
eration of Italian society and the state between 1935 and 1940. In this
period the Fascist National Party, under the guidance of Achille Starace,
massively extended its presence in Italian societal life and, with the creation
of the Gioventù Italiana del Littorio (GIL) in 1937, practically acquired
the monopoly on the pedagogical formation of Italian youth. Additionally,
in the same year, the secretary of the Fascist Party was granted the rank of
a minister. Moreover, this period saw the establishment of the Camera dei
Fasci e delle Corporazioni, which was supposed to crown the building of
the corporative state. Above all, this period was distinguished by the ever-
growing presence of the Fascist state, the so-called campaign against the
bourgeoisie, the proclamation of the Italian Empire in 1936, an ever-closer
understanding with Nazi Germany, and the approval of racist legislation
against Jews in 1938 among many other totalitarian developments.109
We have seen that some rather isolated voices within the FUCI reacted
with growing alarm to these developments, particularly to the process of
sacralisation of politics being carried out in Mussolini’s Italy. However,
for the vast majority of the fucini—and this was a different generation
from that of Montini—born roughly around 1915, the Fascist system of
government was the only political reality they had ever known. Moreover,
for many of them it was the appropriate system for the peninsula, and a
system to derive pride from. For many a fucino Fascism, whatever their
reservations towards it, constituted a fulfilling and rewarding experience
in more than one way. Amid the perceived turmoil and crisis that seemed
to be carrying most of Europe astray, the fucino Cesco Vian reminded
160 J. DAGNINO
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,
through the religious nationalisation of the masses, could offer a ‘modern

Italian culture’, far removed from parochial clericalisms that could become
an excellent pedagogical tool in the formidable challenge of regenerating
and making Italians.116 Additionally, the Catholic intellectuals furthered
justified the Abyssinian adventure by making recourse to some of the
favourite themes of Fascist propaganda, such as the alleged lack of raw
materials and the necessity for overseas outlets for the supposedly over-
crowded and overpopulated nation.117 For their part, the Fascist authori-
ties and its informants recognised and welcomed the growing patriotism
evident among the fucini and their support for the war effort.118
Another aspect of the growing collaboration between the fucini and
the Fascist regime was the students’ active and sometimes enthusiastic
participation in the so-called Littoriali della cultura e dell’arte. These were
annual competitions organised by the GUF for the university youth of the
country. After the Second World War, the myth emerged that the littoriali
had, contrary to the government’s wishes and objectives, become a sort
of locus for dissent and in some cases for outright anti-Fascist activities.119
In the case of former fucini who participated in these annual gatherings,
they have tended to banalise or trivialise the nature of the littoriali and
their participation in them while not denying their involvement. Paolo
Emilio Taviani, for example, has compared the littoriali and his par-
ticipation in them with modern-day television quizzes, deprived of any
meaningful political significance.120 The historical truth is, naturally, more
nuanced and complicated. Luca La Rovere has forcibly and convincingly
demonstrated that the littoriali, far from being the centre of oppositional
activities to Mussolini’s government, proved to be, to a large extent, a
propaganda success for the regime, generating the conscious support of
many university youths of the period.121 Through the littoriali, the Fascist
National Party aimed at the political and moral socialisation of Italian uni-
versity youth with the ultimate goal of producing the ‘new Italians’ who
would guarantee Fascism’s survival through the centuries.
The fucini, for their part, actively participated in these contests. Their
goal was to contribute with their own vision and identity to the efforts
accomplished by the regime. In this sense, just as it would be erroneous
to posit the activities displayed by the Catholic intellectuals at the littoriali
as a form of opposition to the government, it would also be a mistake to
speak of a complete identification of the FUCI with the propaganda of
Mussolini’s regime. Rather, they selectively supported some of the themes
discussed at the littoriali while at the same time preserving their Catholic
162 J. DAGNINO
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
Righetti went on to state the importance of stimulating their fellow fucini

to engage more actively in the littoriali, finishing his letter by asking
La Pira to write an article on the importance of the contests for Azione
fucina.125
In effect, the FUCI press gave ample space to the littoriali and encour-
aged the students to take part in them.126 Above all, the fucini saw the
contests as offering an ‘intelligent and modern’ preparation for the uni-
versity youth of the fatherland as well as a ‘profound sense of inner life’.127
The littoriali were supposed to reflect the allegedly profound changes that
had taken place in Italian society since Mussolini’s assumption of power
in 1922. They were an invitation to university youth of the country to
contribute to the modern nation-building enterprise initiated by Fascism.
In the eyes of the fucini, the contests also responded to some of their
long-term aspirations and desires, such as the will to make science and
knowledge vital, and not arid, elements in the life of the nation—that cul-
ture be a constructive element and not an arid form of intellectualism. For
others, such as Giuseppe Giunchi, the littoriali had been created for the
studious youth who ‘knows and practises the Mussolinian commandment
of “believe–obey–fight”’.128
Several fucini took part in these national competitions. Perhaps the
most well-known example of a Catholic student that partook in these gov-
ernment initiatives was a young man from Bari, Aldo Moro. Moro partici-
pated in the contests of 1937 and 1938, in perhaps the most ideological
of the competitions—that of Fascist Doctrine—coming seventh in 1937

and fifth in the 1938 competition.129 The 1937 contest in Fascist Doctrine
had as its general theme the possibilities of development offered by Fascist
society to the individual personality within the collective organisation, a
theme very dear to the FUCI. In his contemporary account of his par-
ticipation in the 1937 contest, Moro underlined how corporativism was
an intermediate path, a third way between liberalism and Bolshevism.
Moreover, he positively noted how the indestructible and fundamental
characteristics of human personality were duly respected and nurtured. He
added that it was not an oxymoron to speak of freedom within the Fascist
regime, as long as one did not speak ‘naturally of the socially damaging
version of liberalism’. In sum, Moro continued, the Fascist collectivity
was built upon a ‘spiritual foundation that resolves itself in a formula of
harmony, coordination, collaboration’.130
In the 1938 littoriali of Fascist Doctrine—in which Moro came fifth—
the argument of the contest concerned the universal principles and values
of Fascism. The young Moro argued that one could speak of a ‘new and
complete system of Fascist civilisation’131 that imposed new tasks, duties,
and challenges on the peninsula. The universality of Fascism, according to
the young fucino was to be located in its ‘intrinsic, I would say rational,
capacity for dominating every historical situation’ adding that Fascism was
to be conceived as ‘a complete and vital system that synthesises all the vital
experiences’, with a tremendous ‘capacity to address the current needs
of human and social life’. Finally, Moro concluded, all these aspects of
Fascism were rendered possible and ‘exalted by the Revolution and our
spiritual imperialism’.132
Moro’s interventions at the littoriali certainly reflected the general
enthusiasm and support for the regime to be found among large portions
of the university youth of the day, especially after the proclamation of
the Italian Empire in 1936, which had heightened in many Fascist quar-
ters a sense of mission and grandiose collective history-making that was
allegedly unique to the Italian experiment. Moreover, his participation
spoke for a whole generation of Catholic intellectuals who, with excep-
tions of course, had comfortably inserted themselves into the structures
of the regime. Indeed, Mussolini’s government was by now considered,
frequently unconsciously, as the ‘national’, normal, and legitimate govern-
ment of Italy, with little or no space for anti-Fascist attitudes and mentali-
ties. Additionally, Moro’s involvement in the regime’s sponsored contests
for university youth echoed the new culture of the state as a dynamic,
164 J. DAGNINO
creative institution—an instrument for the realisation of human potential

and history-making activity.133
Indeed, the years of totalitarian acceleration, and especially after the
creation of the Italian Empire, were marked by a determined effort on the
part of the Catholic intellectuals to insert themselves in the structures of
the national state. This, of course, took several forms. From the participa-
tion in state organs like the Istituto per la Ricostruzione Industriale (IRI)
and the applause for the racial laws enacted in East Africa,134 to the warm
endorsement given to Mussolini’s participation in the Munich Conference
in 1938, these years saw a consolidation in the relationships of many fucini
with the regime.
It was during this time—1937 to be more precise—that a delicate move
was undertaken to draw closer to the regime, via the religious writer of
Mussolini’s ‘personal’ journal Gerarchia, Don Brizio Casciola.135 The
original idea came from the Bolognese leader of the Movimento Laureati,
Augusto Baroni. Righetti, as president of the laureati, was initially enthu-
siastic about the enterprise of approaching Casciola. At the beginning of
March 1937 he wrote to Baroni assuring him ‘that we will talk about
D. Brizio, which I find very interesting. We should cultivate the relation-
ship to have him as a friend of our work’, though he added ‘nothing else’.136
To further the relationship, they invited him to contribute to Studium.137
Indeed, Brizio Casciola had been in Bologna in January to lecture for a
couple of days on his interpretation of ‘the Cross and the Eagle’, based
on Dante’s famous interpretation of Pascoli and Luigi Valli.138 However,
Baroni was not interested in philological or metaphysical interpretations
but in Casciola’s role as the potential bearer of a spiritual conception that
aimed at uniting civic and religious life in Mussolini’s Italy.139 Moreover,
Baroni continued noting how important it was for them to preserve their
Catholic identity while pursuing this growing collaboration, and how he
was a staunch enemy of those who preached any sort of simplistic ‘mime-
sis’ with the regime that would lead to the evaporation of the civic and
social role he envisaged Catholics playing in Fascist Italy.140 In other
words, Baroni propounded a more fruitful, vital, and dynamic relation-
ship between civic and religious conscience, understood as a contribution
to that ‘deeper and more conscious collaboration between Church and
State’.141 He insisted in his correspondence with Righetti that his main
concern was the building of a modern civitas where Catholics would play
a distinctive role. In defiance of the Montinian line, he rejected the pos-
sibility of ‘waiting for better times that will never come’142 as well as the
Montinian stance of refraining and staying outside socio-political reality.

He polemically concluded that from ‘old men nothing can be expected’.143
Baroni was calling for the elaboration of a modern form of Catholic
politics, in line with the corporativist-authoritarian state. This new form
of politics required in the eyes of the Bolognese leader a ‘new language’
and a ‘participation in the burning questions of our people’.144 Moreover,
if a new type of Catholic politics were to be born, a profound renovation
of Catholic culture would be required. Disparaging of thinkers such as the
French Jacques Maritain, whom Augusto Baroni viewed as out of touch
with modern times, he was also severely critical of those Catholics who
relied solely on the political philosophy and doctrine of Thomas Aquinas.
But Baroni went even further; in his mind not even contemporary figures
such as the Austrians Seipel and Dollfuss met the standards of the modern
Catholic statesman he envisaged. The Catholic politician or statesman the
Bolognese had in mind had to have the ‘guts to confront themes as these:
“Fascist Doctrine” in the light of the Gospels or “the Christian concept
of empire”’.145 Furthermore, Augusto Baroni was of the idea that to carry
forward this profound renovation in the conception of Catholic politics,
a similar work of renewal had to be realised when it came to the nature,
structures and functions of Catholic Action. Above all, he stressed the lay,
secular, and modern character of the organisation, energetically denounc-
ing the ‘old type of Catholic Action, which is restrictive and churchy-like’.
Instead, the new Catholic Action, with the support of the modern means
of communication, had ‘to extend to all and be for all’.146
Baroni was one of many Catholic intellectuals who proposed a more
intimate union and collaboration between Church and State during the
years of totalitarian acceleration. For these enthusiasts such a fusion would
encourage the necessary lay renaissance of the Catholic spirit, something
that Baroni thought was ‘fatal, desired by Providence’. The myth of a
‘Catholic Italy’ could hardly have been expressed in better and more
forceful terms.147
This rapprochement of Catholics with the regime was, however, dis-
rupted—if not reversed—by the crisis of 1938–39 between the regime and
the papacy. The 1938–39 polemic was above all a confrontation over the
question of the monopoly of youth organisations, just as the crisis of 1931
had been, and, to a lesser extent, over the racist legislation approved by
il Duce’s government during that year.148 The legislation directed against
the Italian Jewish population may be said to have constituted the qualita-
tive aspect of the so-called ‘demographic battle’, or at least that is how it
166 J. DAGNINO
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
caused by Jews in Italian universities, he ranted against them, stating that

‘there is no need to forget that they, in their great majority, belong to an
unassimilable race, a race which has given the world the most corrosive and
destructive ideologies of all social, moral, national and religious values’.154
And in 1938, the year of the racist legislation, Lami had no difficulties in
writing to Righetti, with a hint of personal pride, and expressing his ‘very
solid anti-Semitic prejudice’.155 Lami was expressing a traditional Catholic
prejudice against the Jew as an enemy of the Catholic religion and as a
deicide people. However, in the context of 1938, it also expressed a more
modern vision of the Jew as an outsider, better still a foreign enemy of
the national community that, especially after the Lateran Pacts of 1929,
revolved around an encounter between Catholicism and Fascism in the
mind of many Catholic intellectuals such as Guido Lami.
However, as has been stated, other positions that were more under-
standing of the plight of the Jews also emerged. In February 1938, Renzo
De Sanctis published in Studium a review on the book Les juifs written by,
among others, J. Maritain, P. Claudel, R. Dupuis and R. Schwob. In his
review, De Sanctis firmly proclaimed ‘that there are two possible attitudes:
the Christian and the anti-Semitic; and they are mutually exclusive’. The
Italian intellectual continued: ‘God has embodied himself as a Jew, his
Mother is the flower of the Jewish stock, the prophets and apostles are
Jews, our liturgy comes from the sacred Jewish books.’ He concluded by
rhetorically asking himself: ‘And thus … how can we express the enormity
of the indignity and blasphemy in which consists the defamation of the
Hebraic race?’156
Nevertheless, not all of the intellectuals of Catholic Action were pleased
with the kind of statements uttered by an Emilio Guano or Renzo De
Sanctis. Augusto Baroni, to take one example, reacted firmly against the
review published by Renzo De Sanctis. In a letter to Righetti he com-
mented how the publication had left him ‘perplexed’ for expressing ‘only
one side of the question’. Even though he continued by stating that he
did not hold any personal prejudices against the Jews and that he was glad
that the ‘air of pogrom’ had started to vanish in Italy, he confessed that, if
he was living in Romania, for example, his attitude would be completely
different, since in that Eastern European nation ‘the Jews have all the
financial means and constitute a state within the state’. He finished his let-
ter by ironically protesting against the French: ‘Our French friends, now
so philo-Semitic because of their hatred of Hitler, what did they do during
the times of the Dreyfus Affair?’157
168 J. DAGNINO
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
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).
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
Spagna del 1936–39’, in M. Franzinelli and R. Bottoni (eds.), Chiesa e

Guerra. Dalla “benedizioni delle armi” alla “Pacem in terris” (Bologna,
2005), 357–89; Javier Tusell and Genoveva García Queipo de Llano, El
Catolicismo Mundial y la Guerra de España (Madrid, 1993), 183–239;
R. J. Wolff, Between Pope and Duce. Catholic Students in Fascist Italy,
(New York, 1990), 143ff; G. Campanini (ed.), I Cattolici Italiani e la
Guerra di Spagna. Studi e Ricerche (Brescia, 1987); and R. Moro, La
formazione della classe dirigente cattolica (1929–1937) (Bologna, 1979),
516–23.
17. ‘I Gesuiti di Spagna’, Azione fucina, 14 February 1932.
18. Cesco Vian, ‘Il drama spirituale della Spagna contemporanea’, Azione
fucina, 25 November 1934.
19. For the pope’s attitude towards the Spanish Republic and Civil War see,
for example, E. Fattorini, Pio XI, Hitler e Mussolini. La solitudine di un
papa (Turin, 2007), 89–107; Y. Chiron, Pie XI (1857–1939) (Paris,
2004), 338–49; and M. Agostino, Le Pape Pie XI et l’opinion (1922–1939)
(Rome, 1991), 602ff.
20. e.r, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 8–9 (1934).
21. c.v (Cesco Vian), ‘La nostra responsabilità’, Azione fucina, 26 July 1936.
22. See, for example, G. Anichini, ‘Il messaggio del Padre’, Azione fucina, 3
January 1937.
23. See, for example, G. Verucci, La Chiesa cattolica in Italia dall’Unità a
oggi (Rome and Bari, 1999), 48–50, and D. Menozzi, La Chiesa Cattolica
e la Secolarizzazione (Turin, 1993), 148–54.
24. M. Bendiscioli, La Política de la Santa Sede (Barcelona, 1943), 41.
25. M. Conway, ‘Introduction’, in T. Buchanan and M. Conway (eds.),
Political Catholicism in Europe 1918–1965 (Oxford and New York,
1996), 5–6.
26. d.c, ‘Gli obblighi che derivano alle nazioni dal fatto della Rivelazione’,
Azione fucina, 1 September 1934.
27. P. Pappalardo, ‘Uno stato cristiano: l’Irlanda’, Studium, 5 (1937).
28. e.r, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 5 (1937).
29. S. Zingale, ‘La nuova legislazione matrimoniale spagnola’, Azione fucina,
27 November 1938.
30. Ibid.
31. A. Mariutti de S. Rivero, ‘Canti e inni della Spagna Nazionale’, Studium,
6 (1937).
32. L.V, ‘Vita Ecclesiae’, Studium, 3 (1938).
33. M. Bendiscioli, L’Eredità Politica di Dollfuss (Brescia, 1935), 10.
34. Ibid., 9.
35. M. Bendiscioli, La Vita interiore di Ignazio Seipel Cancelliere d’Austria
(Brescia, 1935), 9.
172 J. DAGNINO
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.
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.
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’.
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.
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
74. Angelo Savoia, ‘Cinema’, Azione fucina, 2 May 1937.

75. Clara Valente, ‘Recensioni’, Studium 6 (1933).
76. C. Griffiths, ‘Italian cinema in the Thirties: Camicia Nera and other films
by Gioacchino Forzano’, in The Italianist, 15, (1995), 299–315.
77. For this film see, for example, V. Zagarrio, Cinema e fascismo, 148–55;
R. Ben-Ghiat, Fascist Modernities, 110–12, and C. Camerini (ed.),
Acciaio. Un film degli anni trenta. Pagine inedite di una storia italiana
(Turin, 1990).
78. Ibid., 205.
79. Antonio Covi, ‘Potenza del cinema’, Azione fucina, 13 December 1936.
80. For ‘left’ Fascism see G. Parlato, La Sinistra Fascista. Storia di un progetto
mancato (Bologna, 2000). For the attractions of corporativism among
the Gruppi Universitari Fascisti (GUF), organisation in which, as has
been said, the majority of the fucini were also active see S. Duranti, Lo
Spirito Gregario. I gruppi universitari fascisti tra politica e propaganda
(1930–1940) (Rome, 2008), 234–58, and L. La Rovere, Storia dei
GUF. Organizzazione, politica e miti della gioventù universitaria fascista,
1919–1943 (Turin, 2003), 242–55. For Fascist corporativism more gen-
erally see, for example, G. Santomassimo, La terza via fascista. Il mito del
corporativismo, (Rome, 2006); D. Baker, ‘The Political Economy of
Fascism: Myth or Reality, or Myth and Reality’ in New Political Economy,
11/2 (2006), 227–50; D. D. Roberts, The Totalitarian Experiment in
Twentieth-Century Europe. Understanding the poverty of great politics
(New York and London, 2006), especially 306ff; F. Cordova, Verso lo
Stato Totalitario. Sindacati, società e fascismo (Soveria Mannelli, 2005);
and P. G. Zunino, L’ideologia del fascismo. Miti, credenze e valori nella
stabilizzazione del regime (Bologna, 1995), 245–59.
81. For the diverse currents, see the good and synthetic account offered by
Renzo De Felice in his Mussolini il duce. Gli anni del consenso 1929–1936
(Turin, 1996), 12ff.
82. Roger Griffin had highlighted this futural thrust present in corporativism
and classified it as a form of social modernism. See his Modernism and
Fascism. The Sense of a Beginning under Mussolini and Hitler (Basingstoke
and New York, 2007), 241.
1936.
84. ‘Alla Settimana Sociale dei cattolici italiani’, Azione fucina, 3 September
1933.
85. Paolo Emilio Taviani, ‘Capitalismo, capitale, liberalismo, “Homo oeco-
nomicus”’, Azione fucina, 3 Decemebr 1933. On Taviani (1912–2001),
one of the founders of the Christian Democrat Party and who would be
Minister of Defence in the 1953–1958 period and henceforth Minister of
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
100. Lodovico Montini, ‘Corporativismo e “mistica” dell’economia’, Studium,

1 (1937).
101. Giuseppe Averna, ‘Recensioni’, Studium, 7–8 (1936).
102. Arsenio Frugone, ‘“Nazione” secondo il Mazzini’, Azione fucina, 9
February 1936.
1936.
104. Carlo Zampetti, ‘Interesse individuale e interesse collettivo
nell’ordinamento corporativo’, Azione fucina, 30 August 1936.
105. Sergio Paronetto, ‘Dottrina e realtà in un recente esempio di economia
diretta’, Studium, 2 (1937).
106. Salvatore Piredda, ‘La Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni’, Azione
fucina, 26 March–2 April 1939.
107. Francesco Vito, ‘Il fondamento teorico dell’autarchia’, Studium, 6
(1938).
108. Sergio Paronetto, ‘La ragione contro l’autarchia?’, Studium, 10 (1937).
109. E. Gentile, La via italiana al totalitarismo. Il partito e lo stato nel regime
fascista (Rome, 2002), 137–9; idem, Fascismo. Storia e interpretazione
(Rome and Bari, 2002), 27–8. For the growing totalitarian speed gath-
ered between 1935 and 1940 see also, for example, P. Buchignani, La
rivoluzione in camicia nera. Dalle origini al 25 luglio 1943 (Milan, 2006),
304–54, and R. De Felice, Mussolini il duce. Lo Stato totalitario 1936–1940
(Turin, 1996).
110. Cesco Vian, ‘La nostra responsabilità’, Azione fucina, 26 July 1936.
111. Don Giuseppe de Luca, ‘Dante vivo di Papini’, Studium, 4 (1933).
112. A. Bobbio, ‘Recensioni’, Studium, 9 (1933).
113. Letter from Bernareggi to Righetti, 5 November 1935, in Archivio del
Movimento Laureati, b.6.
114. Letter from Righetti to Augusto Baroni, 19 November 1935, in Archivio
del Movimento Laureati, b.6.
115. Baroni spoke of Maritain’s ‘frigid schematism’, of an attitude that was
‘purely intellectualistic’ and severely passed judgement on what he con-
sidered to be the French philosopher’s disingenuous condemnation. See
his letter to Righetti dated 13 November 1935 in Archivio del Movimento
Laureati, b.6.
116. Letter from Baroni to Righetti, 22 November 1936, in Archivio del
Movimento Laureati, b.10.
117. Antonio Laghi, ‘Il problema delle materie prime’, Studium, 5 (1936);
Silvio Golzio, ‘Sul concetto di sovrapopolamento’, Studium, 7–8 (1936);
and S. Golzio, ‘Il problema delle materie prime’, Studium, 7–8 (1937).
118. See, for example, the report from the authorities of Salerno dated 26
April 1936 in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno,
Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari Generali e

Riservati, Associazioni G1, 1912–1945, b.19. In this report, which dealt
with the FUCI’s spring meetings held in Como, Treviso, Perugia and
Salerno, the Fascist informant enthusiastically recalled how some FUCI
authorities encouraged the students to offer themselves as volunteers for
the Fascist war enterprise. Additionally, at the meeting in Como it was
approvingly underlined how the Catholic Umberto Padovani had spoken
of the ‘religious and civil primacy of Italy’ after the Ethiopian War.
119. Ruggero Zangrandi, a witness of the period, has affirmed that the main
characteristic of the littoriali was its ‘anticonformism’. See his Il lungo
viaggio attraverso il fascismo. Contributo alla storia di una generazione
(Milan, 1998), 125.
120. See his testimonial in the interview he gave to Aldo Grandi in Grandi’s I
giovani di Mussolini. Fascisti convinti_fascisti pentiti_antifascisti (Milan,
2001), 243–44. Taviani was selected in 1934 and 1935 for the section on
Fascist Doctrine and in the 1940 competition of the littoriali came ninth
in the section devoted to corporativism. See R. Zangrandi, Il lungo viag-
gio, 707. Zangrandi´s book-testimonial contains a partial list of the par-
ticipants at the Fascist-sponsored littoriali. See pp. 641–713.
121. L. La Rovere, Storia dei GUF, 265–89. For more on these contests, see,
for example, U. Alfassio Grimaldi and M. Addis Saba, Cultura a passo
romano. Storia e strategia dei Littoriali della cultura e dell’arte (Milan,
1983), and G. Lazzari, I Littoriali della cultura e dell’arte. Intellettuali e
potere durante il fascismo (Naples, 1979).
122. On La Pira see, for example, the fine study by P. D. Giovannoni, La Pira
e la civiltà cristiana tra fascismo e democrazia (1922–1944) (Brescia,
2008).
123. Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b.’Cultura 32–33’.
124. Ibid.
125. Ibid.
126. ‘I Littoriali della cultura e dello sport’, Azione fucina, 14 April 1935.
127. Gigi Scarpa, ‘I Littoriali della cultura e dell’arte a Venezia’, Azione fucina,
8 March 1936.
128. Giuseppe Giunchi, ‘Significato dei Littoriali’, Azione fucina, 21 March
1937. See also, along similar lines, Franco Piccardo, ‘Attualità del pro-
gramma dei Littoriali dell’Anno XV’, Azione fucina, 28 March 1937.
129. R. Zangrandi, Il lungo viaggio, 689. For Moro’s participation in the lit-
toriali see the somewhat apologetic interpretation provided by his
nephew historian Renato Moro in his Aldo Moro negli anni della FUCI
(Rome, 2008), 20–2. This is a short book of just over thirty pages, which
is a synthesis of an article Renato Moro published more than twenty years
ago. See his ‘La formazione giovanile di Aldo Moro’, Storia contemporanea,
178 J. DAGNINO
14 (1983), 803–968. See also G. Formigoni, Aldo Moro. L’intelligenza

applicata alla mediazione politica (Milan, 1997), 12–5, and G. Campanini,
Aldo Moro. Cultura e impegno politico (Rome, 1992), 23–4. Aldo Moro
was to become national president of the FUCI between 1939 and 1942.
130. Aldo Moro, ‘Dottrina del Fascismo’, Azione fucina, 2 May 1937.
131. Aldo Moro, ‘Dottrina del Fascismo’, Azione fucina, 8 May 1938.
132. Ibid.
133. For Fascism’s politics of history see the fine study by Claudio Fogu, The
Historic Imaginary. Politics of History in Fascist Italy (Toronto and
London, 2003).
134. Guido Lami, for example, stated that ‘I have no words to applaud this
provision’. See his letter to Righetti without date, but from late 1937 in
Archivio del Movimento Laureati, b.‘1937 n.2 a 8’.
135. On Casciola see S. Urso, ‘L’aquila imperiale e il veltro dantesco. Il fas-
cismo come orizzonte messianico, universalista e cattolico’ in D. Menozzi
and R. Moro (eds.), Cattolicesimo e totalitarismo. Chiese e culture religiose
tra le due guerre mondiali (Italia, Spagna, Francia) (Brescia, 2004),
247–74, and F. Aronica, Don Brizio Casciola. Profilo bio bibliografico
(Soveria Mannelli, 1998).
136. Letter in Archivio del Movimento Laureati, b.‘1937 n.1’.
137. Under the pseudonym Firmus, Casciola contributed three articles on St.
Paul during 1938. See Firmus, ‘Il Cristiano in S. Paolo’, Studium n.1
1938; Firmus, ‘San Paolo-l’uomo’, Studium, 2 (1938); and Firmus, ‘San
Paolo-L’Apostolo’, Studium, 3 (1938).
138. Baroni to Righetti, 23 January 1937, in Archivio del Movimento Laureati,
b.1.‘1937 n.1’.
139. Ibid.
140. Ibid.
141. Baroni to Righetti, 27 January 1937, in ibid.
142. Baroni to Righetti, 3 May 1937, in ibid.
143. Ibid.
144. Baroni to Righetti, 9 April 1937, in ibid.
145. Ibid.
146. Baroni to Righetti, 31 July 1938, in Archivio del Movimento Laureati,
b.‘1938 n.1’.
147. For the myth of a ‘Catholic Italy’ during the Fascist era see, for example,
F. Traniello, Religione cattolica e Stato nazionale. Dal Risorgimento al
secondo dopoguerra (Bologna, 2007), 221–64; G. Vecchio, ‘Pattriotismo
e universalismo nelle associazioni laicali cattoliche’ in A. Acerbi (ed.), La
Chiesa e l’Italia. Per una storia dei loro rapporti negli ultimi due secoli
(Milan, 2003), 233–74; and G. Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici. Fede e
nazione dal Risorgimento alla Repubblica (Bologna, 1998), 99–131. For
useful methodological considerations regarding this topic see A. D.

Smith, Chosen Peoples. Sacred Sources of National Identity (Oxford, 2003).
148. On the crisis of 1938 see, for example, E. Fattorini, Pio XI, Hitler e
Mussolini. La solitudine di un papa (Turin, 2007), 170–81 and 187–92;
M. Casella, Stato e Chiesa in Italia (1938–1944). Aspetti e problemi nella
documentazione dell’Archivio Storico Diplomatico del Ministero degli
Affari Esteri (Galatina, 2006), 15–63; G. Miccoli, I dilemmi e i silenzi di
Pio XII. Vaticano, Seconda guerra mondiale e Shoah (Milan, 2000), 263ff;
S. Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows. The Vatican and the holocaust in
Italy (New Haven and London), 42–57; and R. De Felice, Mussolini il
duce. Lo Stato totalitario, 128 ff
149. On the ‘antibourgeois’ battle, especially strong among the Fascist
University Groups see, for example, S. Duranti, Lo spirito gregario,
258–76; T. Buzzegoli, La polemica antiborghese nel fascismo (1937–1939)
(Rome, 2007) and L. La Rovere, Storia dei GUF, 339–50.
150. The literature on the Jews in Fascist Italy is extensive. See, for example,
M-A. Matard-Bonucci, L’Italia fascista e la persecuzione degli ebrei
(Bologna, 2008); E. Collotti, Il fascismo e gli ebrei. Le leggi razziali in
Italia (Rome and Bari, 2004); M. Sarfatti, Gli ebrei nell’Italia fascista.
Vicende, identità, persecuzione (Turin, 2000); and R. De Felice, Storia
degli ebrei italiani sotto il fascismo (Turin, 1993).
151. P. Orano, Il Fascismo, vol II. Rivoluzione delle camicie nere. Lo Stato totali-
tario (Rome, 1938), 142.
152. Giovanni Ambrosetti, ‘Il Sionismo’, Azione fucina, 13 May 1934. This is
the continuation of an article of the same name published by Ambrosetti
in Azione fucina, 6 May 1934.
153. Guido Lami, ‘Segnalazioni’, Studium, 8–9 (1934).
154. Guido Lami, ‘Segnalazioni’, Studium, 3–4 (1935).
155. Lami to Righetti, 13 June 1938, in Archivio del Movimento Laureati,
b.‘1938 n.1’.
156. Reds (Renzo De Sanctis), ‘Dàgli all’untore’, Studium, 2 (1938).
157. Baroni to Righetti, 26 February 1938, in Archivio del Movimento
Laureati, b.15.
158. Letter from Anichini to the regional ecclesiastical assistants, in Archivio
della Presidenza della FUCI, b.’Assistenti 1925–40’.
159. Letter dated 28 June 1939, in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI,
b.’Presidenza e Rami ACI 1938–1948’.
160. Moro to Gigi Franchella, 21 July 1939, in ibid.
161. Letter from anonymous fucino to Moro, 4 July 1939, in ibid.
162. Letter from Franchella to Moro, 15 July 1939, in ibid.
163. Marconi to Moro, 8 July 1939, in ibid.
164. G.P, ‘Nel giubileo del Papa Pio XI’, Studium, 1 (1939).
180 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 FUCI 1939–43

CHAPTER 9
Catholic Students at War:

The FUCI 1940–43
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

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_9
184 J. DAGNINO
or political Catholicism as Montini had, for example. His father, a school

inspector, had had a secular upbringing with no great Catholic sympathies.
His mother, a teacher, was imbued with that typical southern spiritual-
ity, expressed in an idiosyncratic, personal, and intimate adhesion to the
Gospels, an attitude that would leave its mark on the young Aldo in the
sense that his line of spirituality was less ‘militant’, less ‘intransigent’ than
had been the case of Montini and Righetti.3 It was a more ‘secular’ line
of spirituality with Dominican undertones, as Mario Casella has cogently
suggested.4 Moro entered the FUCI chapter in Bari in 1934, where he
became acquainted with bishop Marcello Mimmi, a leading local figure in
matters such as the Gospel groups and the liturgical movement. In 1937
he became president of the local student group. As we have already seen,
he participated in the Littoriali della cultura e dell’arte in 1937 and 1938,
with a distinction in both.
Moro became president of the FUCI at a sensitive moment in the his-
tory of the movement and its relations with the Fascist regime. The FUCI
also experienced problems with the Vatican due in part to the new statutes
given by Pius XII to Catholic Action that aimed to stress the ‘diocesan’
nature of the organisation.5 In many quarters it was perceived that the new
pope, unlike his predecessor, viewed the organisation with a certain degree
of reserve and even suspicion. Indeed, the Vatican eventually cut the fund-
ing for the university groups, leaving them in a precarious financial situa-
tion.6 Moreover, Moro was only received in a private audience by the pope
on 12 June 1940, when he had been in office for more than a year—a clear
break with past tradition when it had been customary to receive the new
president shortly after his election.7
The debate over the question of consensus or dissent among the
Catholic world to Mussolini’s war effort is still a lively issue among profes-
sional historians. It is undoubtedly true that Pius XII’s efforts went from
trying to prevent the war to maintaining the neutrality of Italy and, upon
commencement of the conflict, of reaching an early peace to avoid fur-
ther suffering while explicitly advocating a policy of neutrality of the Holy
See due to its universal and international character. However, there were,
nevertheless, some significant attitudes on the part of the Holy See that
departed from the policy of Pius XI and which helped to shape to some
extent the public opinion of the Catholic populace. Above all there was a
certain relaxation towards European nationalist forces, to which the late
Pius XI had grown increasingly hostile during his last days.8
CATHOLIC STUDENTS AT WAR: THE FUCI 1940–43 185
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
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
The Myth of Catholic Italy

In this context, an important role in the assumptions of war was played by
the ideal or myth of ‘Catholic Italy’, so pervasive in the interwar period.21
Thus they emphasised the notion of an Italy essentially and naturaliter
Catholic, religion being the agent of personal and national regeneration
in an age of mass politics. Certainly the experience of the Great War had
signalled a major step in the consolidation of the relationship between
Catholics and the state, and their integration in the nation.22 The arche-
types of palingenetic sacrifice, hierarchy, camaraderie in a common des-
tiny, and the meaningfulness embedded in the experience of war were all
important elements in this process, deeply cherished by Catholic soldiers
and military chaplains in the years to come.
The FUCI’s perception of Italian identity unsurprisingly stressed the
role of Catholicism as the generator of the nation’s unity, specificity, and
individuality. At variance with the historical interpretation given by the
earlier liberal elite, they affirmed that the Risorgimento was an incomplete
process. In contrast to the Fascist interpretation of history, according to
which Mussolini and his movement had brought about the completion
of national unity, they were of the opinion that Italy had not yet fulfilled
188 J. DAGNINO
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
‘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
however implicitly, viewed as un-Italian, an expression of cultural and

spiritual weakness not in accord with the formation of Italian soldiers.37
As might be expected, this vision was fuelled by perceptions of his-
tory. Italy had been at the centre of the greatness of the Roman Empire
and providence had chosen Rome to be the centre of Catholicism and
its universal mission of redemption. Rome was Catholic, and that meant
a universal task, above the restrictions inherent to national boundaries.
Indeed this vision of Romanità did represent a significant difference with
Fascist Rome.38 Rome was a central myth in the symbolic universe of the
regime both as a source of legitimation and imperial vocation, as well as
justifying its ‘totalitarian’ and ‘modernising’ project.39 Mario Cordovani,
a Dominican and a distinguished theologian close to the association,
warned during the war against potential misrepresentations of Rome:
‘Roman Church does not mean national Church. Rather it signifies
Universal Church in that, centred in Rome, it embraces in time the centu-
ries and in space the whole earth’; adding sternly that ‘Rome, capital of the
Christian world, has not Italianised the Church’.40 Of course, this vision
did not entail an internationalist conception rooted in the message of the
Gospels or of an egalitarian international order. Instead, it provided the
basis for a healthy and therapeutic nationalism. Italy, due to its position at
the centre of Catholicism, was bestowed with a pedagogical mission for
the moral and spiritual enlightenment of the world, precisely because of
the self-proclaimed universal vocation of Rome. The peninsula was unique
in offering the noblest example of the coexistence of Saint Augustine’s
teaching on the ‘Two Cities’: ‘every man belongs to two cities: the city of
time and the city of eternity; every humble being of the earth is enriched
by two homelands: the one conquered through human blood and the
other through divine blood … two lives that interpenetrate and, through
a wondrous exchange of vital blood cells, realise a plenitude of existence,
a life that is truly life’.41
The history of religion is of course not only the scrutiny of dogmas,
institutions, beliefs, and doctrines. It also comprises the analysis of myths,
rituals, behaviours, mentalities, and attitudes. Doctrines are rarely com-
pletely distinguished in men’s minds. They usually are affected by histori-
cal legacies and mental assumptions or, more generally, by the world of
particular cultures. In this sense, the doctrine of the two Romes was not
always thought of as consisting of separate entities and, more importantly,
was rarely experienced and lived as such by many faithful of the age. Being
at the centre of Christian civilisation, the history of Italy self-evidently
demonstrated its superb civilising mission: ‘the mission of Italy … It is

declared, patent, impressed on every corner and marble of our monu-
ments, on the texts of our poetry, on the living and throbbing energies
of our burning currency.’ The providential quest was legitimated by ‘the
political greatness in the service of religious primacy’. Ultimately and
unquestionably lay the eternal truth that ‘Catholic Rome is the universe’.42
The sense of a natural and organic community vivified by the Catholic
spirit was accompanied in the early stages of the war by the ideal of a
European Catholic bloc to be realised in its aftermath. Spain and Portugal
were the most evident sources of inspiration for this perceived Christian
integral order together with France, if only the latter was able to rid itself
of its decadent and anti-patriotic elements. In contrast to the atrocities
committed by the Republicans during the Civil War, the Nationalist forces
were commended for their ‘charitable’ behaviour during the military con-
flict and for their rendering ‘homage to the Church’ after every victory.43
After the devastating Second Republic and the experience of the Civil War,
Spain had once again emerged to its rightful place as a Catholic power.
Indeed, it seemed that the nation was fulfilling late Pius XI’s cherished
ideal of restoring all things in Christ. Franco’s Spain had restored the sem-
inaries and the faculties of theology at the national universities.44 Salazar’s
Portugal was also signalled out as a model of National Catholicism, and he
was extolled for his ‘therapeutic’ labour that had involved the elimination
of socialists, masons, and, in general, anticlericals.
The Iberian Peninsula offered a convincing example of the ‘new times’
that were supposedly taking place, in the sense of a reversal of materialism
and secularism that were beginning to be replaced by a healthy spirituality
engrained in true morality that offered a robust Christian virility capable
of overcoming the weakness and decadence of ‘Free Mason liberalism’ and
of ‘re-educating public mentalities’.45
New Models of Sainthood

Nevertheless, the experience of war by the FUCI cannot be completely
understood solely through the national dimension, although it was of
pivotal value. New and older religious dynamics were at least equally—
if not more—important in their representations of warfare. Perhaps the
single most important factor was constituted by the primacy of experien-
tial knowledge rather than abstract types in their religious life. This did
not imply a rejection of moral or disciplinary dogmatism. It did, however,
192 J. DAGNINO
represent a significant shift in the way in which religion was perceived,

represented, and lived. The predominant ecclesiology of Italy at the time
was, as we have seen, strongly rooted in a Tridentine model. This meant a
rather sharp underpinning of the Church as a self-contained ‘perfect soci-
ety’, focusing stalwartly on its legal and hierarchical dimensions. In this
process a very important role was played, as has been stated, by the eccle-
siastical assistant Emilio Guano. In 1936, as we have seen, he published
the large-circulation volume La Chiesa, which collected the proceedings
of a religious course he had given in the 1934–35 academic year in his
native Genoa.46 The fulcrum of Guano’s interpretation was the notion of
the church as essentially the Mystical Body of Christ, that is the vision of
an entity primarily consisting in the communion between Christ and man.
Fundamentally, the church was not presented as a static reality above the
course of history or as a militia progressively and immutably advancing
through this ‘valley of tears’, indifferent to the specific sociocultural reali-
ties of the age. To some extent, Guano offered a voice that differed from
the traditional ‘fortress mentality’ so common in interwar Europe. He
presented the institution primarily in its mysterious sacramental dimen-
sion, where the hierarchic and legal components were placed at the service
of the latter in its rationalisation and enactment. Significantly, the Genoese
priest referred repeatedly to the image of the ‘family’ in order to describe
the fundamental nature of the church.47 The church, for him, constituted
a living organism that was open to all men; a dynamic reality or a com-
munion of pilgrims towards their natural end who is God and that in its
journey through earth is always ‘adding something to its construction’.48
This vision provided the basis for the way in which the FUCI approached
the spiritual challenge of the war. The reality of war demanded in the eyes
of many in the association a return to the core values of Christianity, not
so much as a reclamation of its strict doctrinal dimension or its qualify-
ing social and political traditions. Influenced by the ideas of Guano, the
FUCI intellectuals argued that Christianity was better perceived and lived
as a continuous work of fermentation in a rapidly varying world rather
than as a closely-knit set of formulae which, precisely for that reason, were
incapable of rendering justice to the complexities of life. This ‘Christian
Vitalism’ demanded a spirituality, as Aldo Moro pointed out, ‘that is
enriched every time it expresses itself: intimate and expansive, personal
and social’. It also brought with it a potential ecumenical impulse, a mes-
sage not reserved solely to the selected militant faithful: ‘To a large extent,
Christianity is for us how we see it reflected in the face of man that walks
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
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
without a doubt, the case of Giosuè Borsi. Born in Livorno in 1888, he

finally converted, following a period of youthful excess. His religiosity
was marked by a thirst for authenticity and personal torment. It was this
spirituality embedded in the vicissitudes of life, a religion lived ‘in genu-
flection’ that made him such an engaging and charismatic figure for many
youths in Mussolini’s Italy.66 As with so many others of his generation he
was a convinced interventionist and volunteered to fight in the Great War.
He died towards the end of 1915, and his name became associated with
Christian martyrdom and selfless patriotism.
Although the FUCI was always careful to not succumb to too overt
an activism, always proclaiming the value of contemplative intelligence, it
nevertheless published some of the letters Borsi had written to his mother
from the front.67 There emerges in this correspondence a glorification of
youth as symbolic of manhood, virility, energy, and passion, and of death—
not as corruption or decadence—but as fulfilment, sacrifice, and redemp-
tion. Thus, death should be confronted with serenity, even joyfully, as it
epitomised religious adulthood and the beginning of a truer life. Passing
away was hence the ultimate sacrifice crowned by redemption and resur-
rection. Borsi proclaimed that he was ‘tranquil, perfectly serene and firmly
decided to fulfil my duty’, although he had the premonition that he would
not emerge out of the conflict alive. Indeed, a young death was to be
cherished. Youth as purity, passion, robust ideals, and clarity of vision were
duly exalted. After all, Jesus Christ had also faced death at a young age.
Youth as symbolising spiritual perfection and devoid of the corruption and
decadence associated with old age was a powerful and engaging myth. In
many ways, death in war was a powerful demonstration of St. Paul’s teach-
ing on his theology of the ‘new man’. Borsi wanted to thank providence
for the honour ‘it bestows on me … while I am still in the spring of my
life, in the plenitude of strengths and wits’.68 The vision of a palingenetic
and regenerative death was further empowered by the Catholic students
who found death on the battlefield. Serenity and natural goodness seemed
to be the essential characteristics of the fallen fucini in what may be per-
haps most suitably described as the ‘fortitude of innocence’, a primitive
and incorruptible spiritual energy, a simplicity that constituted their own
source of strength. Fulvio Lari, who had found death on the Albanian
front, was thus remembered as ‘pure in his heart’ and in possession of a
‘charming, child-like simplicity’.69 Mauro Merli, who died on the Greek
front in March 1941, was also immortalised as having ‘that healthy smile
that reveals the joy of a Christian and victorious soul … the kind of joy
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
odernising holocaust of the thousands of young Italians who had fallen

m
in the Great War for the regeneration of the peninsula.79 Although in many
respects both world views participated in what G. L. Mosse has termed the
‘normative virility’ of the period,80 the differences and contradictions were
more pronounced than the similarities, and this is perhaps the most suit-
able platform for comprehending the incompatibilities between Fascism
and Catholicism. In Emilio Gentile’s words, Fascism tended to create a
‘new Italian race of dominators, conquerors and creators of civilisation’,81
bolstering creative violence, aggressiveness, pre-potency, and the traits of
the implacable warrior. The FUCI, as we have seen, also cherished the
virtues of discipline, obedience to the legal order, sobriety, camaraderie,
courage, spirit of sacrifice, and the love for the fatherland, but these were
purified and elevated by religion. Evocatively, the ideal of the Christian
soldier was not the antagonistic, pitiless soldier of Fascism, but rather
of chivalry. Indeed, they severely condemned notions that exalted the
‘force of the muscle more willingly than the force of the spirit’ as well
as the ‘atrocious language of mere violence, revealing of atrocious senti-
ments’. By contrast, Christianity had ‘humanised … the military profes-
sion’ around the ideal of chivalry, which far from being a sign of weakness
represented ‘the harmonious fusion of Christian piety and warrior virtues’.
Chivalry was to be understood as ‘an interlacement of delicate and heroic
sentiments, of indomitable courage and moving forgiveness, of inflexible
justice and Christian clemency’. Moreover, the authentic knight ‘fought as
a hero and died as an ascetic’.82
Instead of an uncontrolled and instinctual thirst for action, Aldo Moro
advocated a ‘truer heroism; a humble heroism of little things that requires
the silent overcoming of one’s own selfishness’.83 Catholicism could not
exhaust itself in the heroism of action. It had to procure the ‘heroism of
the interior conquest’.84
Religion as experience, as the conquest of interiority and unity of life,
was increasingly dramatised in the face of otherwise unbearable sacrifices
and horrors. More than ever in war, as Paolo Blasi exclaimed, one ‘had the
sensation of being a pilgrim’.85 Then again, life at the front was a golden
opportunity to gain spiritual adulthood, understood as autonomy, inde-
pendence, and intimate possession of the self. Once again, Paolo Blasi was
very eloquent in this respect: ‘Our faith is so resolute that we are not afraid
of life … After fighting so much, we have acquired a true experience of
good and evil. We now know life because we know how to live it.’86 The
conflict had made possible the ‘government of ourselves, the government

of our individual experience’.87
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.
2. The literature on Aldo Moro is unsurprisingly very extensive, albeit of very

uneven scholarly value. Among the most useful are: R. Moro, Aldo Moro
negli anni della FUCI (Rome, 2008); P. Scaramozzino (ed.), Cultura e
politica nell’esperienza di Aldo Moro (Milan, 1982); R. Moro, ‘La formazi-
one giovanile di Aldo Moro’ in Storia contemporanea, October 1983,
803–968; G. Campanini, Aldo Moro. Cultura e impegno politico (Rome,
1992); G.B. Scaglia, ‘Moro: ′dall’apostolato della verità ′ alla politica della
verità’ in idem, La stagione montiniana (Rome, 1993), 221–41;
G. Formigoni, Aldo Moro. L’intelligenza applicata alla mediazione politica
(Milan, 1997); F. Vander, Aldo Moro. La cultura politica cattolica e la crisi
della democrazia italiana (Genoa, 1999); and S. Suppa, (ed.), Convegno di
studi in memoria di Aldo Moro nel ventennale della sua scomparsa (Bari,
2001).
3. R. Moro, Aldo Moro, 18–9, and G. Formigoni, Aldo Moro, 9–10
4. M. Casella, L’Azione cattolica alla caduta del fascismo. Attività e progetti
per il dopoguerra (1942–45) (Rome, 1984), 132. He had felt the influence
of Dominican fathers during his time in the FUCI chapter of Bari.
5. For these reforms see, above all, M. Casella, L, Azione Cattolica all’inizio
del pontificato di Pio XII. La riforma statutaria del 1939 nel giudizio dei
vescovi italiani (Rome, 1985)
6. Pius XI had traditionally given the fucini 10,000 lire for each national
congress, a sum which was reduced to 5000 lire for the 1939 assembly. See
the letter complaint from Moro to Mons. G. Borghino, 23 August 1939,
in Archivio della Presidenza Generale della Azione Cattolica, b. 24.
7. R. Moro, ‘La formazione giovanile di Aldo Moro’, 950–52. The coolness
displayed by Pope Pacelli was deeply felt by an association like the FUCI
that in the past had enjoyed excellent and very intimate ties with Pius
XI. At the end of 1939, after several failed attempts to be received by the
Holy Father the vice ecclesiastical assistant of the federation, Franco Costa,
wrote to Moro signalling ‘the profound unpleasantness that we will not
have the audience with the pope’. The letter is in Archivio della Presidenza
della FUCI, b. ‘Assistenti Ecclesiastici 1925–1940’. Similarly, the central
ecclesiastical assistant of the federation, Guido Anichini, bitterly told an
anonymous friend in December 1939 how ‘we feel somewhat isolated …
the Holy Father has decided to not grant the promised audience … Besides,
we are penniless’. See letter in Archivio della Presidenza Generale della
Azione Cattolica, b. 24.
8. Pius XI had, during his pontificate criticised not nationalism as such but
what he termed its ‘exaggerated’ variant. Nevertheless, in the late 1930s,
the Italian government turning towards totalitarianism, and most of all the
aggressive and somewhat anti-Christian nationalism of the regime led the
ailing pope to adopt a much more cautious attitude.
202 J. DAGNINO
9. A. Giovagnoli, ‘Nazionalità e universalità nella chiesa di Pio XI’ in

L. Pazzaglia (ed.) Chiesa, cultura e educazione in Italia tra le due guerre
(Brescia, 2003), 22.
10. Cited in G. Verucci, La chiesa nella società contemporanea. Dal primo
dopoguerra al Concilio Vaticano II (Rome and Bari, 1988), 153.
11. J. F. McMillan, ‘France’ in T. Buchanan and M. Conway (eds.) Political
Catholicism in Europe 1918–1965 (Oxford, 1996), 53.
12. Pius XII Summi Pontificatus, 20 October 1939 in Pius XII. Selected encyc-
licals and addresses (New York, n.d.), 9.
13. Salvatore Piredda, ‘La Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni’, Azione
fucina, 26 March–2 April 1939.
14. Azione fucina, 16 June 1940.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid. This issue also contained the publication of Mussolini’s reasons for
entry in the war.
17. S. Gottardi, ‘Riparazione’, Azione fucina, 23 June 1940; G. La Pira, ‘La
responsabilità del pensiero’, ibid; G. Fioretti, ‘Responsabilità’, Azione
fucina, 28 July 1940.
18. For good treatments of this aspect, see, for example, F. Malgeri, La Chiesa
Italiana e la Guerra (1940–45) (Rome, 1980) and idem, ‘Chiesa. Clero e
laicato cattolico tra Guerra e resistenza’, in G. De Rosa and T. Gregory and
A. Vauchez, (eds.), Storia dell’Italia religiosa, iii: L’età contemporanea
(Bari, 1995), 301–34, especially 304–8.
19. A fundamental role in the development of a model of personality was
played by Franco Costa. For this vital priest in the FUCI of this period see,
for example, C. Tortora, Franco Costa (1904–1977). La gioia di credere
(Rome, 1983) and above all the proceedings of the congress Don Franco
Costa. Per la storia di un sacerdote attivo nel laicato cattolico italiano
(Rome, 1992).
20. Paolo Blasi was one of the many fucini at the front and his letters offer
precious material for the understanding of the dynamics of war, violence
and religion. This citation derives from a manuscript of Blasi’s conserved in
Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Segretaria militare, 1937–43’.
21. For this ideal, see, among others, G. Miccoli, Fra mito della cristianità e
secolarizzazione. Studi sul rapporto chiesa-società nell’età contemporanea
(Casale Monferrato, 1985); F. Traniello, ‘L’Italia cattolica nell’era fascista’
in G. De Rosa, T. Gregory and A. Vauchez (eds), Storia dell’Italia religi-
osa, iii: L’età contemporanea, 257–99; G. Formigoni, L’Italia dei cattolici.
Fede e nazione dal Risorgimento alla Reppublica (Bologna, 1998);
G. Vecchio, ‘Pattriotismo e universalismo nelle associazioni laicali cattoli-
che’, in A. Acerbi (ed.), La Chiesa e l’Italia. Per una storia dei loro rapporti
negli ultimi due secoli (Milan, 2003), 233–75; and R. Moro, ‘Nazione,
cattolicesimo e regime fascista’ in Rivista di storia del cristianesimo, 1

(2004), 129–147.
22. See R. Morozzo della Rocca, La fede e la Guerra. Cappellani militari e
preti-soldati (1915–1919) (Rome, 1980).
23. P. A. Borsieri, ‘Alessandro Manzoni. Poeta nazionale degli italiani I’,
Studium, 10 (1927).
24. V. Bianchi (Alcide de Gasperi), ‘Ripensando la ‘Storia d’Europa’ Studium,
6 (1927).
25. P. A. Borsieri, ‘Alessandro Manzoni.Poeta nazionale degli italiani I’,
Studium, 10 (1927).
26. P. A. Borsieri, ‘Alessandro Manzoni. Poeta nazionale degli italiani II’,
Studium, 11 (1927).
27. See, G. Formigoni,, L’Italia dei cattolici. Fede e nazione dal Risorgimento
alla Reppublica, 133–63.
28. See Canti fucini (Milan, 1940), 2.
29. See the eloquent material contained in a popular interwar volume written
by the fucino Giovanni Battista Scaglia, L’Azione cattolica universitaria
(Rome, 1936), 56–60. Scaglia was an influential figure and Giulio
Andreotti used to speak of him as ‘the official historian of the FUCI’. This
quotation is derived from a letter from Andreotti to the Supreme Council
of the association written in June 1943, in Archivio della Presidenza della
FUCI, b. ‘Consiglio Superiore. Verbali (1924–46)’. Even Aldo Moro, cer-
tainly not among the most enthusiastic patriots of the federation, wrote
well into the war that ‘we can truly say that to serve the Fatherland in arms
is a great moment in life’. See his article ‘Vita militare’ in Azione fucina, 30
July 1941.
30. See E. Gentile, Il culto del littorio. La sacralizzazione della politica
nell’Italia fascista (Bari and Rome, 2003).
31. At the organisation’s 1940 northwestern convention, the prefect of Pavia
reported with satisfaction how the students had ‘rendered homage to the
Fallen of the Great War, also visiting the sacrarium erected for the Fascist
Martyrs’. The report is in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero
dell’Interno, Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Divisione Affari
Generali e Riservati, G.1, b. 19, f. 221.
32. Pio Ciprotti, ‘nel decennale della Casti Connubi’, Azione fucina, 17 July
1940.
33. Sergio Pignedoli, ‘Ai militari’, Azione fucina, 11 December 1940.
34. Raimondo Manzini, ‘Missione d’Italia’, Azione fucina, 17 November
1940.
35. S. Pignedoli, Franco Castellani (Rome, 1942), 72 and 84. The volume
contains precious material written by Castellani. The author was a military
chaplain who had a regular column in Azione fucina during these years.
204 J. DAGNINO
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
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.
81. E. Gentile, Fascismo. Storia e interpretazione, 295.

82. Silvio Solare, ‘La Cavalleria. Lineamenti della personalità dell’ufficiale’,
Azione fucina, 10 March 1942.
83. Aldo Moro, ‘Tempo di esami’, Azione fucina, 13 October 1940.
84. Aldo Moro, ‘Vivere’, Azione fucina, 2 May 1941.
85. The letter is in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Segretaria militare
1937–43’.
86. Ibid.
87. Ibid.
88. M. Clark, Modern Italy 1871–1995 (Harlow, 1996), 286.
89. P. Morgan, The Fall of Mussolini. Italy, the Italians, and the Second World
War (Oxford, 2007), 72–84.
90. M. Patricelli, L’Italia sotto le bombe. Guerra aerea e vita civile 1940–1945
91. Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Assistenti 1941–48’.
92. Ibid.
93. Giulio Andreotti, ‘Opinioni’, Azione fucina, 10 May 1943.
94. Indeed, the military chaplains remained among the most enthusiastic
Catholics to support Mussolini until the very end. See the excellent study
by M. Franzinelli, Il riarmo dello spirito. I capellani militari nella seconda
Guerra mondiale (Treviso, 1991).
95. The letter is in Archivio della Presidenza della FUCI, b. ‘Rapporti con Giac
e Guf’.
96. Ibid.
97. Ibid.
98. Ibid.
99. The report is in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Ministero dell’Interno,
Direzione Generale di Pubblica Sicurezza, Affari Generali e Riservati, G.1,
b19, f. 221.
CHAPTER 10
The FUCI 1943–45: The Path

to Post-Fascism
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.

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1_10
210 J. DAGNINO
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
famous expression: ‘The death of the homeland is certainly the greatest

event that can occur in the life of an individual.’23 Indeed, the symbolic
date of the armistice had witnessed the escape from Rome of King Victor
Emmanuel III, and Marshal Pietro Badoglio, first to Pescara and then to
Brindisi. This had dealt a very hard blow to the image of the state, embod-
ied in the monarchy after the collapse of the Mussolinian myth. The great
majority of the Italian population felt abandoned, just like the hundreds
of thousands of Italian soldiers who either deserted and desperately fled
for their respective home towns or surrendered to the Germans without
making the slightest effort to resist.24 The dissolution of the army was one
of the most evident and visible signs of the breakdown of the old state
and also of the end of the idea of a united nation. For many Italians there
remained nothing to fight for except personal salvation, and most sought
refuge in the private sphere of the family.
In this crucial and critical historical context, for Salvatore Satta the
death of the homeland left men and women deprived of one of their fun-
damental sheltering skies, in a situation where ‘the problem of existence’25
assumed primary importance. Indeed, from his perspective, the day of the
armistice was dangerously confused by many of his fellow citizens with
peace and the end of the war, when in reality for Satta the ‘real’ and most
challenging of wars was just beginning after the 8 September 1943. It
was a conflict that was to be fought in the realm of the individual citizen’s
conscience. It was a war of man against himself, a conflagration of purifi-
cation and expiation, a ‘bloody examination of conscience of a multitude
of Cains in front of the Lord’.26 According to Satta, this self-examination
was necessary above all due to the fact that, in his mind, the immense
majority of the Italian people had from the start of the Second Wolrd
War wished for the defeat of their own country. This tragic situation was
caused above all by the mistake made by many of his fellow countrymen
in asserting—and in this it is not difficult to read a veiled criticism of some
anti-Fascist forces—that the only ones who truly loved the nation were
those who desired its defeat as a means of getting rid of the Fascist gov-
ernment, a position that the Catholic author considered at best naïve and
that did not take into account the wider and more profound effects that
this would mean for the concept of nationhood and the civic fabric.27 In
this tragic spiritual crisis that affected the Italian nation he blamed first of
all the king and Badoglio, who should have been the symbols and ultimate
defenders of the Italian state. Instead, both of them, according to Satta,
had found themselves ‘incapable of fighting’, so that ‘the monarch and
214 J. DAGNINO
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.
The Case of Aldo Moro

Aldo Moro provides a further interesting example of some of the trends
discussed above,31 not only because of his belated enrolment in the
Christian Democrat Party but also because of his wider interests and forms
of engagement displayed during these two fundamental years, which
ranged from the already discussed topic of the death of the nation, to
the role of Catholics in politics, anti-Fascism, and the reconstruction of
Italy. Above all, his position during this period can be characterised as the
primacy of ethics and morals over party political considerations, his prefer-
ence for a pluralist stance in the options available to Catholics in the politi-
cal realm, and by a consistent mistrust towards the cultural, social, and
political models of the pre-Fascist Catholic movement.32 Between 1943
and 1945 his writings were mostly limited to his contributions to two peri-
odicals of his native Bari, La Rassegna and Pensiero e Vita. Both of these
publications were oriented towards positions that were very different from
those of the former Popular Party.33
Moro, like Satta and others in the FUCI, thought that the nation had
entered into a period of crisis after the armistice of 8 September 1943, a
time of dissolution and disintegration in the civic and communal struc-
tures of the country. Italy was undergoing a chaotic time in its history, a
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
Italy was experiencing, according to Moro, a situation where there pre-

vailed a ‘dangerous unilaterality of political parties’,42 where the latter
attempted to monopolise all the social, cultural, and political expressions
of the Italian people. During these years, Moro passed severe judgment on
the democratic credentials of the political parties of his time, including the
Christian Democrat Party. He was of the opinion that true democracy was
a rare creature in the political formations of his country, although there
was a feverish and, at times, unbearable, ‘democratic rhetoric’.43 What pre-
dominated in the nation was a version of democracy that was preoccupied
with a game of arbitrariness and compromises, and an arrogant will for
dominion that did not pay attention to the moral elevation of the masses
or their integration into the life of the nation.44 Rome had become, in the
eyes of the Catholic intellectual, the capital of self-centredness, a city where
democracy and government more generally were perceived as the domin-
ion of small hypocritical factions rather than as the rule of the people—an
arrogant and artificially self-contained world that qualified every divergent
opinion as ‘fascist or neo-fascist, so it can deny it the right to be taken
into consideration’.45 True democracy did not exist at all in the Italian
capital, precisely because the political parties, which contained elements
of ‘totalitarian intransigence and partisan violence’, did not recognise the
legitimacy of pluralism of ideas and opinions.46 The political parties had
understood democracy in a solely external fashion, without taking into
consideration the fundamental moral issues it involved and the immense
spirit of sacrifice and renewal that it warranted. Democracy, if it was to be
a vital experiment in post-Fascist Italy, had to eschew the mistakes of pre-
Fascist liberal democracy and its many pitfalls. As late as June 1945, the
young Catholic intellectual still considered that the nascent democratic
form of rule that existed in the peninsula was ‘chaotic and unconscious’.47
In this complex political and social environment, not even the Christian
Democrat Party escaped Aldo Moro’s disapproval. Above all, he criti-
cised Alcide De Gasperi’s political formation for being overtly simplistic
and more concerned with winning over the masses with the traditional
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
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
histories of Catholic intellectual thought which adopt a predominantly

Franco-German axis (with a stopping off point in Louvain) in their analy-
sis of Catholic intellectual history.
Finally, the FUCI also matters in terms of politics. This was true less
in terms of the specifics of political engagement, but more in the sense
that the fucini marked the emergence of a new seriousness and scope
in engagement in politics in Italy on the part of Catholic intellectuals.
Sturzo’s PPI was not primarily a party of intellectuals, and it remained
strongly marked by the defensive preoccupations of Catholic parties of the
first decades of the twentieth century. The FUCI, however, was different.
On the one hand, the authoritarian structure of Fascist Italy precluded
direct engagement in electoral politics; but, on the other, the enforced
disengagement from electoral politics brought about by the regime con-
tributed to the maturation among the fucini of a different, and in their
mind, higher attitude to politics. Once again, as Moro’s comments dem-
onstrate, politics was a domain to be taken seriously by the FUCI, and in
which mere electoral jousting, as the Christian Democrats at times seemed
to represent, was not good enough. Here again, their ideas had legacies
for the post-war era. The perception that the Italian Republic of the 1946
period was dominated by the polarisation of Communists and Christian
Democrats has often served to minimise unduly the richness of the politi-
cal debate of that era. The rapidly modernising Italy of the 1950s and the
1960s was also one which had an increasingly vibrant political culture, and
one in which Catholic intellectuals, with their diverse forms of political
engagement (and occasionally abstention), played a role.
Notes
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.
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
10. Andreotti to De Gasperi, 11 July 1944, in Archivio della Presidenza della
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
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
25. Ibid., 17.

26. Ibid., 21 and 186–87.
27. Ibid., 19 and 71–73.
28. Ibid., 157.
29. Ibid., 77. Indeed, Satta displayed a strong degree of Anglophobia. In
another passage of De profundis he referred to England as a ‘massive cor-
poration’. See ibid, 95.
30. Ibid.
31. For these crucial years on the ideological and political itinerary of Aldo
Moro the literature is not extensive. See, for example, L. La Rovere,
L’eredità del fascismo. Gli intellettuali, i giovani e la transizione al postfas-
cismo 1943–1948 (Turin, 2008), 181–9 and the slightly apologetic contri-
bution by his nephew and historian R. Moro, ‘La formazione giovanile di
Aldo Moro. Dall’ impegno religioso a quello politico’ in S. Suppa (ed.),
Convegno di studi in memoria di Aldo Moro nel ventennale della sua scom-
parsa (Bari, 2001), 51–96.
32. A. Giovagnoli, La cultura democristiana. Tra Chiesa cattolia e identità
italiana, 1918–1948 (Rome and Bari, 1991), 209–10 and F. Traniello, Da
Gioberti a Moro. Percorsi di una cultura politica (Milan, 1990), 235–43.
33. R. Moro,’La formazione giovanile di Aldo Moro. Dall’impegno religioso a
quello politico’, 67.
34. A. Moro, ‘Si comincia’, La Rassegna, 23 November 1943.
35. A. Moro, ‘Monarchia o Repubblica’, La Rassegna, 9 November 1944. For
more on Aldo Moro and the idea of the death of the fatherland see
E. Gentile, La Grande Italia. Il mito della nazione nel XX secolo (Rome
and Bari, 2006), 306–8.
36. A. Moro, ‘Crisi di fiducia’, La Rassegna, 9 March 1944.
37. A. Moro, ‘Prospettive’, La Rassegna, 10 August 1944.
38. A. Moro, ‘Ricostruire lo Stato’, Pensiero e Vita, 10 March 1945.
39. A. Moro, ‘Crisi di fiducia’, La Rassegna, 9 March 1944.
40. A. Moro, ‘Il peso del dolore’, Pensiero e Vita, 23 December 1944.
41. A. Moro, ‘Perchè siamo all’opposizione’, La Rassegna, 1 February 1945.
42. A. Moro, ‘Per una nuova democrazia’, La Rassegna, 15 June 1944.
43. A. Moro, ‘Allettamento all’assolutismo’, La Rassegna, 17 February 1944.
44. A. Moro, ‘Le difficili vie della democrazia e della pace’, Pensiero e Vita, 8
January 1945 and idem, ‘Da massa a popolo’, Pensiero e Vita, 20 January
1945.
45. A. Moro, ‘Roma capitale dell’egoismo’, La Rassegna, 15 March 1945.
46. Ibid.
47. A. Moro, ‘Democrazia e vita morale’, La Rassegna, 11 June 1945.
49. A. Moro, ‘Bisogno di chiarezza’, Pensiero e Vita, 3 February 1945.
50. A. Moro, ‘Liberazione’, Studium, 1–2 (1945).

51. A. Moro, ‘Uomini di pace’, Pensiero e Vita, 22 July 1944.
53. A. Moro, ‘Allettamento all’assolutismo’, La Rassegna, 17 February 1944.
54. A. Moro, ‘Orientamenti’, La Rassegna, 4 January 1945.
55. A. Moro, ‘Da massa a popolo’, Pensiero e Vita, 20 January 1945.
56. Ibid.
57. A. Moro, ‘Ricostruzione’, La Rassegna, 15 August 1944.
58. See, for example, F. Malgeri, L’Italia democristiana. Uomini e idee del cat-
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Democristiani. Storia di una classe politica dagli anni trenta alla Seconda
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59. K. Chadwick (ed.), Catholicism, politics and society in twentieth-century
France (Liverpool, 2000); M. Conway, Catholic politics in Europe,
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Knight-Monks of Vichy: Uriage, 1940–1945 (Montreal and London, 1993).
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Index
A Aquinas, Thomas, 126, 134, 165. See

Acerbi, Antonio, 10n1, 11n9, 16, also neo-Thomism
25n8, 80n11, 83n40, 172n38, Summa, 134, 186
178n147, 202n21 Arcozzi Masino, Vincenzo, 17, 18,
Action Française movement, 32, 185 25n13, 38, 43n55
Adam, Karl, 126 armistice of 8 September 1943, 212, 214
Adornato, Giselda, 11n9, 11n12, 15, Averna, Giuseppe, 157, 176n101
24n2, 62n59 Azione fucina, 5, 10n5, 23, 25n9,
Paolo VI. Il coraggio della modernità 25n16–17, 26n37, 26n41–4,
(Paul VI. The courage of 27n53–4, 27n56–7, 40n14, 50,
modernity), 11n9, 15, 24n2, 54, 59n16, 60n26, 60n29,
62n59 61n50, 61n57, 66, 72, 76,
African empire, 75, 78, 199 82n35, 83n48, 84n50, 84n57,
Akademiker Verband, 126 85n63, 85n69, 91–2, 108n7,
Ambrosetti, Giovanni, 2, 66, 77, 78, 109n13, 111n27, 114n77,
85n67, 166, 179n152, 206n71 114n93, 115n112, 116n124–6,
Andreotti, Giulio, 2, 4, 10n2, 199, 117n144, 129, 136n15, 136n21,
203n29, 207n93, 210–12, 137n30–3, 137n36, 138n41,
220n4, 221n6–11, 221n21 139n69, 139n72, 162, 170n2,
Anichini, Guido, 106, 117n144, 168, 186, 202n13
171n22, 179n158, 201n7,
221n21
Annoni, Nello, 177n122, 199 B
Anschluss, 96 Bachelet, Giorgio, 195, 206n64, 212
anti-Semitism, 127, 138n49, 166 Badoglio, Marshal Pietro, 213

1700–2000, DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-44894-1
246 INDEX
Bank of Rome, 46 Brucculeri, Angelo, 34, 41n32, 157,

Barbieri, Gino, 212 175n97
Baroni, Augusto, 11n13–14, 58n2, Bruni, Gerardo, 212
60n34, 77, 78, 83n47, 84n57, Burleigh, Michael, 89, 109n18,
85n65, 85n66, 112n43, 160, 111n39, 113n63, 114n89
164, 165, 167, 169, 170,
176n114–16, 178n138,
178n141–2, 189, 204n36 C
Barth, Karl, 126 Camera dei Fasci e delle Corporazioni,
Bendiscioli, Mario, 98–100, 108n7, 159, 176n106, 185
113n71, 114n83–4, 114n88, Caresana, Paolo, 7
147, 171n33 Carli, Mario, 104, 116n128
on Nazi Germany, 97–101, 103 Carta della Scuola, 169, 180n165,
Benedictine Abbey of Maria Laach, 180n167
125–6 Carta del Lavoro (Labour Charter),
Ben-Ghiat, Ruth, 70, 82n37, 84n58, 33, 34, 40n26
85n70, 139n73, 172n39, Casciola, Don Brizio, 134, 178n135,
173n67, 174n77 178n137
bonifica, 70 Castellani, Franco, 189, 197
Berdiaev, Nikolai, 92, 111n35 Catholic Action, Italy, 1, 2, 5–7, 9,
Bernareggi, Adriano, 40n10, 48, 71, 10n1, 30, 31, 37, 46–52, 57–8,
82n31, 82n34–5, 88–9, 92, 101, 65, 66, 71, 73, 76–8, 80n10, 96,
109n9, 111n30, 115n111, 120, 101, 120, 121, 127, 133,
135n5, 135n6, 135n7, 149, 150, 135n11, 145, 148–50, 165–9,
160, 170n3, 172n42, 172n52, 172n38, 184, 194, 200, 211,
175n94, 176n113 221n8
Bevilacqua, Giulio, 6, 7, 11n11, 91, support for the Fascist government,
94, 98, 105, 107, 111n28–9, 101
117n148, 121, 135n10, 136n13, Catholic Church
137n35, 142, 170n4 family structure, 21, 35, 74, 79, 87,
Blum, Léon, 143, 170n12 128, 153, 192, 193
Bo, Carlo, 129, 139n70 ‘fortress mentality’, 17, 24, 71,
Bobbio, Aurelia, 71, 82n33 192
Bogdanov, Aleksandr, 93 glorification of youth, 196
Bolshevism, 89, 92–5, 100, 112n43, intellectual ideal, 3–5, 16–21, 24,
115n99, 143, 144, 147, 163 30, 32, 33, 37, 38, 48, 49, 52,
Borsi, Giosuè, 196, 206n66–8 53, 57, 74, 104, 106, 107,
Bosco, Giovanni, 134 121, 124–6, 129–31, 142–5,
Bottai, Giuseppe, 102, 115n114, 169, 148–51, 153–6, 158, 160–5,
180n165, 180n167 167, 169, 209–12, 215–20
Branca, Vittorio, 67, 93, 111n41, interwar spiritual crisis, 91
140n94 militancy, 5, 9, 23, 121, 148
INDEX 247
racial attitudes, 164 D

view of modernity, 3, 53, 68, 107, Daniel-Rops, Henri, 87, 88, 107n1,
124, 148, 149 108n5, 108n6, 108n7
Catholic Communists, 212 Darré, Walther, 99
Catholicism Dawson, Christopher, 95, 108n7,
in Austria, 96, 145–7 113n60
in France, 32, 74, 124–6, 128, de Felice, Renzo, 60n33, 67, 80n5,
142–3, 160, 191 80n7, 109n8, 174n81, 176n109,
in Spain, 93, 142–6, 185, 191 179n148, 179n150
Catholic ‘totalitarianism’, 121 de Gasperi, Alcide, 4, 91, 111n26,
Catholic University of Milan, 8, 135n6 140n104, 203n24, 209–11, 216,
Catholic Young Men’s Association 217, 220n3, 221n10, 221n13
(JMV), 96 de Giorgi, Fulvio, 11n9, 85n62,
Catholic youth, 51, 96, 166, 119, 135n3
168, 189 ‘ecclesiastical totalitarianism’, 119
Catholic Youth Sports Association, 96 de Luca, Giuseppe, 82n37, 88, 108n8,
Ceschi, Stanislao, 100 139n70, 160, 172n47, 176n111
Chenu, M.D., 128 De Sanctis, Renzo, 167, 179n156
Chesi, Vittorio, 79 Dedè, Bruno, 50, 175n87
Christian Democrats, 1, 68, 210–12, Descartes, René, 19–20, 23
217, 220 Dessauer, Friederich, 150, 152,
Christian Social Party, Austria, 146 172n50, 172n53, 173n54,
Christ the King, feast, 30–3 173n55, 173n57, 173n63
Ciriaci, Augusto, 40n11, 77 Philosophie der Technik, 150
Civardi, Luigi, 33–4, 40n26 Dezza, Paolo, 22, 26n44
Clerissac, H., 128 Diocesan Assembly of Catholic Action,
Colonetti, Gustavo, 151, 172n53, Rimini, 8
173n54, 173n56, 173n58, Dollfuss, Engelbert, 145–7, 165
173n62 Dos Passos, John, 131
colonialism, 78, 85n60 Duce, il, 46, 47, 60n33, 80n5, 80n7,
Conferences of St. Vincent de 105, 169, 170, 174n81, 179n148.
Paul, 134 See also Mussolini, Benito
Congar, Yves, 92, 111n32, 128, 129
Cordovani, Mario, 18, 22, 25n15,
26n43, 172n43, 190, 204n40 E
corporativism, 4, 33–4, 155–7, 163, ecclesiology, 123, 126, 128, 136n23,
177n120 138n55, 192
Costa, Franco, 79n2, 89, 109n13, Ethiopian campaign, 67, 76, 84n59,
122, 136n15, 136n21, 137n36, 160, 177
194, 197, 202n19, 205n56, Vatican reaction to, 6, 7, 9, 29, 36,
205n57 37, 46, 47, 51, 52, 54, 56, 68,
Croix de Feu, 143, 170n13 75, 96, 136n23, 145, 184, 185
248 INDEX
F rapprochement with Mussolini’s

Fascism government, 50, 105, 161,
cult of youth in Italy, 72 163, 166
New Man ideal, 74, 104, 105, 107, reaction to Ethiopian campaign, 67,
112n48, 189, 196, 197 76, 160
‘spiritual realism’, 130 relationship with Fascist Party, 38,
war propaganda, 186, 199, 200 135n11, 159
Fascist National Party, 37, 159, 161 socialism, opposition to, 32–4, 89,
Fascist University Groups (GUF), 3, 91, 93, 95–100, 155, 156, 158,
37, 45, 59n13, 66, 155, 168, 160
179n149, 197 Soviet communism, attitude
Federazione Universitaria Cattolica towards, 93, 94, 109n18
Italiana (FUCI) and technology, 4, 19–20, 148–54
and the arts, 2 Feroldi, Franco, 157, 175n96
capitalism, view of, 34, 130, 148, Ferrari, Francesco Luigi, 35
152, 155 Ferrone, Vincenzo, 68, 80n13,
Catholic intellectual, 3–5, 16–21, 115n108
24, 30, 32, 33, 37, 38, 48, 49, Ferroni, Gino, 104, 116n125,
52, 53, 57, 74, 104, 106, 107, 139n71, 155, 158, 174n83,
121, 124–6, 129–31, 142–5, 176n103
148–51, 153–6, 158, 160–5, First World War, 11n13, 31, 41n32,
167, 169, 209–12, 215–20 85n65, 110n24, 205n59, 219.
charity, 17, 33, 78, 79, 98, 99, 122, See also Great War
136n15, 186 Forzano, Gioacchino, 154, 174n76
cinema, attitudes towards, 3, 4, Franchella, Gigi, 169, 179n160
149–54 Franco, General Francisco, 89, 122,
clashes with GUF, 2 145, 146, 157, 185, 189, 191,
crisis of 1931, 2, 41n30, 55–3, 194, 197, 199
59n13, 101, 165 Frassati, Pier Giorgio, 134,
crisis of Italian identity, 1943, 212 140n100–2
engagement with professionals, 2, freemasonry, 31, 46, 143
4, 130 French Revolution, 17–18, 109n18
friendship, importance of, 122, 193 Frugone, Arsenio, 158, 176n102
liberalism, opposition to, 30, 51, fucini, 1, 3–5, 8, 16, 18, 19, 21, 23,
124, 161 24, 29–33, 35, 37, 38, 45, 46,
liturgy, rejection of formalism, 100, 49, 50, 57, 58, 66, 72, 73,
125–7, 167 75–7, 88, 89, 94–7, 100,
‘lived Catholicism’, 124 102–4, 107, 119, 121, 122,
under Montini and Righetti, 16, 38, 125, 126, 129, 141–9, 153,
57, 67, 71, 148, 184 156–9, 161, 162, 164, 168,
national congress, 2, 6, 8, 37, 45, 169, 186, 187, 189, 194, 196,
46, 53, 76, 168 197, 200, 201n6, 209–12, 214,
Nazism, attitude towards, 91, 95, 219, 220
97, 98, 100, 143, 147 futurism, 105
INDEX 249
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
Italy, 1, 3–5, 7–9, 10n1, 11n16, La Rassegna, 214, 222n34–7,

17, 34, 37, 38, 42n47, 47, 222n41–3, 222n45, 222n47–8,
48, 53, 67, 68, 70–9, 81n20, 223n52–4
101, 102, 105, 107, 117n140, Lari, Fulvio, 196
120, 123, 126, 129, 131, 132, Lateran Pacts
134, 139n71, 147, 149, 154, Article 43, 47
158–60, 163–7, 173n67, concordat, 3, 47–9, 59n6, 73, 96,
177n118, 178n147, 179n150, 97, 101, 113n61, 113n72, 166
184–92, 195, 196, 199, L’Ausa, 8
200, 204n35, 204n36, 204n39, Laval-Mussolini accords, 67
209, 210, 212, 214–17, La Vie intellectuelle, 111n32, 129,
219, 220 137n28
interwar period, 87, 90, 91, 107, Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily
130, 153, 187 Diseased Children, 97
League of Nations, 18, 31, 40n17, 87,
145, 158, 160
J League of the Militant Godless, 93,
Jesuits, 22, 34, 41n32, 46, 57, 58, 93, 111n38. See also God-builders
112n43, 143, 144, 146, 157, Leo XIII, 90
175n97 Libertas, 90
liturgical disputes with, 57 liberalism, 21, 32–3, 68, 72, 92, 98,
101, 130, 155–6, 158, 160, 163,
170n3, 174n85, 191
K Littoriali della cultura e dell’arte, 61,
King Victor Emmanuel, 46, 213 177n121, 177n127, 184
Klausener, Erich, 96 Lizier, Pietro, 6
Krassin, Leonid, 93 L’Osservatore Romano, 51, 60n32
Luciani, Luciano, 45, 58n3, 173n73
Lunacharsky, Anatoly, 93
L Luther, Martin, 19–20, 23, 25n20
La Pira, Giorgio, 162, 177n122,
202n17
La Rovere, Luca, 42n47, 82n37, M
108n4, 161, 174n80, 177n121, Macerata, 2, 45, 46, 58
179n149, 222n31 Mallett, Robert, 89, 109n18
Lacombe, Olivier, 26 Manzoni, Alessandro, 83n38–9, 188,
La Fionda, 7, 40n17, 41n36, 42n43, 203n23, 203n25–6
53, 54 Marchetti Selvaggiani, Francesco
laicism, 17–18 (cardinal vicar of Rome), 56–8
Lami, Guido, 83n48, 84n50, 84n53, March of Rome, 210
113n70, 166, 167, 178n134, Marcocchi, Massimo, 16, 25n5, 29,
179n153–5 39n2, 114n83, 137n23
INDEX 251
Marconi, Salvatore, 169, 179n163 203n29, 205n53, 206n67,

Marian Congregations, 57 207n83–4, 214–20, 222n31–2,
Maritain, Jacques 222n35
Antimoderne, 23, 26n20 Moro, Renato, 16, 23, 29, 52, 65,
Integral Humanism, 23, 111n37 71, 79n3, 90, 110n19, 119,
Three Reformers: Luther, Descartes, 177n129
Rousseau, 23, 25n20 Mosse, George L., 70, 81n24, 81n26,
Marmion, C., 128 116n127, 198, 205n55, 206n80
Maurras, Charles, 32, 33 Movimento Laureati, 5, 66, 79n3,
Meomartini, Rodolfo, 77 85n65–7, 87, 89, 92, 96, 98, 100,
Merli, Mauro, 196 101, 109n9, 112n43, 115n103,
Mezzogiorno, 35 135n6, 136n23, 137n28–9, 164,
Mimmi, Marcello, 184 173n56, 176n113–16, 178n134,
Mira, Giuseppe, 212 178n136, 178n138, 178n146,
Misner, Paul, 67, 68, 80n10 179n155, 179n157, 180n166, 210
modernism, 70, 80n14, 82n28, Munich Agreement, 1938, 169,
82n36, 91, 123, 126, 174n82 180n170
modernity, 2–4, 15, 19–21, 23, 24, Murgia, Ivo, 212, 221n20
29, 31, 53, 56, 58, 65–86, 90, Mussolini, Benito, 4, 10n1, 33, 36,
91, 95, 100, 101, 106, 107, 45–8, 47, 50, 53, 59n6, 59n9,
112n48, 117n141, 120, 124, 67, 73, 76, 82n28, 84n59, 102,
130, 131, 134, 135, 139n75, 105–7, 106, 107, 116n115,
140n80, 148–50, 153, 155, 157, 117n141, 134, 154, 156, 158,
158, 204n39 159, 161–4, 166, 169, 175n88,
Catholic Church, relation to, 16–24, 184, 185, 187, 196, 199,
31, 47, 49, 50, 57, 90, 93, 96, 202n16, 204n39, 207n94, 209,
101, 121, 144, 211 211–13. See also Duce, il
Montanari, Fausto, 16, 17, 25n9, 103,
105, 106, 116n120, 116n133,
117n142, 124, 137n34, 140n85, N
173n59 nationalism, Italian, 33, 55, 56,
Montini, Giorgio, 11n10, 61n43 61n54, 99, 103, 160, 186, 188,
Montini, Giovanni Battista, 1, 2, 6, 190, 201n8
7, 11n9, 15, 17, 20–1, 22, Nazism (National Socialism), 80n14,
25n7, 25n10, 26n20, 27n50, 89, 91, 95–98, 100, 114n76,
29, 31, 33, 36, 39, 40n17, 114n89, 115n99, 143, 147
52–8, 91, 210 persecution of Catholics under, 93,
Montini, Lodovico, 42n53, 157, 95, 96, 101, 166
175n98, 176n100 neo-Thomism, 22. See also Aquinas,
Moro, Aldo, 2, 4, 5, 10n2, 162, 168, Thomas
177n129, 178n130–1, 183, 192, New York Stock Exchange Crash,
193, 198, 201n2–3, 201n7, 1929, 130
252 INDEX
Nicoletti, Michele, 30, 39n5 Quadragesimo Anno, 34, 41n30,

Night of the Long Knives, 96 80n10
Quas Primas, 30, 39n6–7
Ubi arcano, 145
O Vigilanti cura, 153
Orano, Paolo, 166, 179n151 Pius XII, 25n15, 58, 180n170, 184,
Ossicini, Adriano, 210, 221n7 185, 202n12
Pizzardo, Giuseppe, 37, 42n46, 57
political religions, 3, 89–91, 106, 107,
P 109n18, 110n19, 110n21,
Pacelli, Eugenio. See Pius XII 110n22, 111n27, 114n76, 119,
Pact of Four, 67 135n2, 141, 144
paganism, 90 Pomini, Francesco Pio, 197, 206n71
Palmieri, Nello, 31, 40n15, Pontifical Academy of Nobili
84n54 Ecclesiastici, 7
Papini, Giovanni, 132, 139n70 Popular Front, France, 87, 143, 144
Storia di cristo, 132, 140n91 Popular University, 7–8
Papini, Massimo, 23 Probst, Adalbert, 96
Paronetto, Sergio, 111n36, 135n1, Protestantism, 126
148, 159, 172n41, 175n89,
176n105, 176n108, 210, 212
Parti Démocrate Populaire, 39 R
Partito Popolare Italiano (PPI), 5, 6, Reich Youth, 96
29, 35, 36, 39, 41n35, 46, 53 relativism, 17, 23, 98
Paul VI, 1, 2, 7, 15 renaissance, 18, 77, 88, 165, 169, 219
Pediconi, Luigi, 212 Ricci, Berto, 51, 61n37
Pensiero e Vita, 26n34, 214, 222n38, Righetti, Igino, 2, 6–8, 11n13–15, 29,
222n40, 222n44, 222n49, 37, 48, 50, 52, 55, 57, 58n2–3,
223n51, 223n55 59n4, 60n25, 60n29, 61n41,
Piemontese, Filippo, 133, 140n92, 62n59, 62n62, 112n43,
173n72 115n103, 135n9, 149, 160, 162,
Pignedoli, Sergio, 195, 203n33, 172n44
203n35, 204n37, 206n61–3, Risorgimento, 10n1, 83n40, 178n147,
206n69, 206n72 187, 203n27
Pius IX, 21, 26n35, 71 Roberts, David D., 112n46, 157,
Syllabus, 26n35 174n80, 175n95
Pius XI Romanità, 106, 117n141, 169, 190,
Dilectissima nobis, 144 204n39, 204n40
Divini Redemptoris, 94, 112n52 Roman Question, 6, 46–8, 54
Mit brennender Sorge, 100, 115n100 Ronca, Roberto, 57, 62n61
Non Abbiamo Bisogno, 51, 60n35, Rosa, Enrico, 93, 96, 111n43, 143,
101, 115n106 146, 170n5, 170n7–11, 170n15
INDEX 253
Rosenberg, Alfred, 99, 114n93 Starace, Achille, 159

The Myth of the Twentieth Century, 99 statolatry, 33, 90, 101
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 19, 20, 23, stirpe, 75, 153, 170. See also Catholic
25n20 Church
Russia, 3, 93, 95, 101, 107, 111n42, Sturzo, Luigi, 4–7, 35–7, 41n35, 46,
112n48–9 56, 68, 147, 148, 204n38, 209
Ruttman, Walter, 154 subjectivism, 17, 18, 20, 21, 23
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
Vian, Cesco, 109n8, 144, W

159, 171n18, 171n21, Wolff, Richard J., 10n3, 11n6, 15,
176n110 24n3, 29, 35, 39n4, 41n34,
Victor Emmanuel III, King, 41n37, 58n2, 59n13, 62n59, 67,
213 68, 80n8, 171n16, 209, 220n1
von Hildebrand, Dietrich, 97–8,
114n78–9
von Schirach, Baldur, 96 Z
Vondung, Klaus, 97, 114n76, Zama, Piero, 102, 115n113
114n89–90 Zionism, 166

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HISTORIES OF THE SACRED AND SECULAR

Faith and Fascism

More information about this series at

Faith and Fascism

ISBN 978-1-137-44893-4 ISBN 978-1-137-44894-1 (eBook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016959976

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017

Cover Illustration © INTERFOTO / Alamy Stock Photo

Printed on acid-free paper

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature

It is a pleasure to be able to thank a number of people and institutions

Part 1 The FUCI 1925–3313

2 The FUCI and the Conquest of the Modern World:

3 The Architecture of the City of God: Politics and

4 The FUCI and Fascism, 1925–33 45

Part 2 The FUCI 1933–39 63

5 A Path to Modernity: The Fuci in the 1930s 65

6 The Crisis of Civilisation and the Sacralisation of Politics

7 FUCI Ideas in the 1930s: The Search for a

8 Building the New Order, 1933–39 141

Part 3 The FUCI 1939–43181

9 Catholic Students at War: The FUCI 1940–43 183

10 The FUCI 1943–45: The Path to Post-Fascism 209

This is a study of the main ideological developments and currents of the

© The Author(s) 2017 1

s­ ituation was different. By 1929, 50 % of the fucini were also members of

Christianity was presented as a palingenetic force, as an integral revolution

pluralism. The epilogue concludes by analysing the case of Aldo Moro as

The History of the FUCI

As an introduction to the material which follows, it might be useful pro-

upon an organisation that sought to exercise an autonomous role within

the FUCI—although it was not a mass organisation in Fascist Italy—was,

The FUCI 1925–33

The FUCI and the Conquest of the Modern

The prevailing interpretations in the historiography of the FUCI during

© The Author(s) 2017 15

especially Montini’s—openness to the values of modern culture and to

‘a closed system that imposed the renunciation of everything that was

The Conquest of the Modern World

concept of sovereignty, whereby progressively the nation state was born

Certainly one of the harshest detractors of modern times among the

their darkest impulses and instincts, leading a feverish, convulsed, obses-

right to ‘govern modern conscience’.38 Montini went on to state that in

in terms, yet again, of a positive confrontation with modernity. She goes

to add that Thomism offered a ‘Christian conception of a new world’.55

5. M. Marcocchi, ‘G. B. Montini. Scritti Fucini (1925–1933): linee di let-

Maritain of Antimoderne. It was first translated and commented into

46. See, for example, G. Campanini, ‘Gli influssi di J. Maritain su G.B. Montini-

The Architecture of the City of God:

As demonstrated in the previous chapter, many fucini were highly criti-

© The Author(s) 2017 29

the spirit of the PPI continued to be cultivated.4 Others, like Michele

The Royalty of Christ the King and Its Enemies

­ niversity students, they had to refrain from participating in party politics

a Catholicism understood exclusively as the hierarchical order of pagan

c­ ritical of what he deemed to be an erroneous conception of the just and

The Legacy of the PPI and the Question

reflected again the FUCI’s commitment to the papacy, as the arbiter of

sector, it was a pre-requisite to be a member of the Fascist Party. On the

life.57 Giovanni Battista Montini also shared, to some extent, a paternalis-

di Cristo Re’ in A. Melloni (ed.), Cristianesimo nella storia. Saggi in onore

the official periodical Bollettino ufficiale dell’Azione Cattolica Italiana. In

0. Letter to his family, 16 April 1923, in ibid., 199.

Part 1 The FUCI 1925–3313

2 The FUCI and the Conquest of the Modern World:

3 The Architecture of the City of God: Politics and

4 The FUCI and Fascism, 1925–33 45

Part 2 The FUCI 1933–39 63

5 A Path to Modernity: The Fuci in the 1930s 65

6 The Crisis of Civilisation and the Sacralisation of Politics

7 FUCI Ideas in the 1930s: The Search for a

8 Building the New Order, 1933–39 141

Part 3 The FUCI 1939–43181

9 Catholic Students at War: The FUCI 1940–43 183

10 The FUCI 1943–45: The Path to Post-Fascism 209

s ituation was different. By 1929, 50 % of the fucini were also members of

niversity students, they had to refrain from participating in party politics

c ritical of what he deemed to be an erroneous conception of the just and