Scripta manent

I felt much moved when the Holy Father – visiting the Italian Embassy in Palazzo Borromeo – told me that he reads 30Days and thanked me for the article devoted to him. Scripta manent. When Monsignor Montini and Aldo Moro entrusted me with the editorship of Azione Fucina, the fortnightly newsletter of the Federation of Catholic University Students, apart from the understandable emotion I felt great joy

Giulio Andreotti

Benedict XVI visiting the Italian Embassy to the Holy See, Palazzo Borromeo, Rome, 13 December 2008<BR> [© Osservatore Romano]

Benedict XVI visiting the Italian Embassy to the Holy See, Palazzo Borromeo, Rome, 13 December 2008
[© Osservatore Romano]

I felt much moved when the Holy Father – visiting the Italian Embassy in Palazzo Borromeo – told me that he reads 30Days and thanked me for the article devoted to him.
Scripta manent. When Monsignor Montini and Aldo Moro entrusted me with the editorship of Azione Fucina, the fortnightly newsletter of the Federation of Catholic University Students, apart from the understandable emotion I felt great joy. And I remember the creative excitement I felt every time in designing the layout. We didn’t have a large circulation, but to be the target of stones thrown by Roma Fascista, the university students’ organ, was very interesting for us. In one case we were also “suspended”. By chance we came out with an editorial on the possibility of being good Italians without hating the enemy on the very same day on which Mussolini said that we must hate the English for three generations (why three wasn’t clear). The issue was seized and we were suspended, with a later easing of the punishment thanks to the good offices of the Secretariat of State.
A few years later, when I had become undersecretary at the presidency, they brought me the relative file: and I was astonished to see that the suspension had been decided – in blue pencil – by Mussolini himself.
In the Federation and the University Graduates’ Movement we could call ourselves politically a-fascist, having created a space independent of the single-party… officialdom.
In relation to the twenty years of the Fascist regime I think it is right to avoid panegyrics or overall demonization. Certainly