EDITORIAL
from issue no. 04 - 2007
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Mural literature
The requirements of Christian charity prevent us from replying as would come naturally to the anonymous authors of the screeds against Archbishop Bagnasco and the squalid and presumptuous custodians of a secular State that none of us challenge. Some people may even regret that the “Roman question” no longer exists to justify strong counteroppositions to the Church
Giulio Andreotti
Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco escorted by two Genoa policemen
In fact not many months earlier Pietro Nenni had been glad of shelter in the Lateran Seminary; grateful that nobody ever had forced him to hear mass. But now freedom had come, and with it a sharp demarcation between sacred and profane. It was a duty for the Catholics and the clergy to try to avoid in Italy the persecutions ferociously undergone in the countries where the communists (allies of Nenni) had taken power. But reference to that was in no way pleasing to “Don Pietro” (as Mario Missiroli called him speaking with Pius XII). The spheres of jurisdiction between God and Caesar were defined in the Gospel; and encroachments were to be castigated. And then the allies of the communists weren’t willing to lend an ear to the fact that in Emilia and elsewhere the hunting down of priests continued well after 25 April 1945. A strange way of conceiving the demarcation between sacred and profane.
However what brought about convergence between the Christian Democrats and democrats of other persuasion was precisely Nenni’s working for a united front that prevailed over the previous policy of «Marching separately to strike together». The Italians were alert to the danger and on 18 April 1948 built the great dike of freedom.
The following years had varied features, in an alternation of approaches and rejections between the Socialists who followed Nenni and those who followed Saragat. Till there was maximum confusion in July 1953 when Saragat torpedoed the last De Gasperi government, suspecting, without any objective reason, that an agreement (or at least a non-belligerency) was being shaped between the Christian Democrats and “non-democratic” Socialists.
In the background there was always the influence of the Soviet Union, with massive financial help to linked foreign parties and with “prizes” to friends of the friends.
Going some weeks ago to the funeral of Boris Yeltsin it was inevitable that the long and complex twists and turns of our relations with Moscow should come to mind, something that always unfolded with a sharp distinction between intergovernmental relations and relations (financial also) among brother parties (or stepbrother such as Nenni’s followers).
The funeral ceremony in the rebuilt cathedral of the Most Holy Savior was a clear sign of the times. Putin and the other leaders who spent some hours listening to the complex Byzantine liturgy, had nothing of the air of people who must fend off the dealers in the opium of the people. There was no simultaneous translation nor any literature handed out, but I’m sure that in his by no means brief funeral elegy the Patriarch spoke with more than respect for the defunct. As for myself, I remembered the concert given some years ago in the Vatican by the Red Army ensemble that loudly chased out the old spectre of their watering their horses in Saint Peter’s Square (an expression attributed to Don Bosco).
What came to mind during the funeral in Moscow was the petulance of an Italian Socialist leader who thunders every week on television against an alleged breach of the secular status of the country. Lately the targets have been the Archbishop of Genoa and Pope Benedict XVI for their heartfelt appeals against the cooling down (or worse) of family values.
In the not short length of my political experience I can say that I found in the one same person the most coherently intransigent religious believer and the politician most concerned for the separation of the spheres. The person was President De Gasperi, who was, by no accident, very strong against deviations from marital fidelity.
The requirements of Christian charity prevent us from replying as would come naturally to the anonymous authors of the screeds against Archbishop Bagnasco and the squalid and presumptuous custodians of a secular State that none of us challenge.
Some people may even regret that the “Roman question” no longer exists to justify strong counter-opositions to the Church.
