The extraordinary La Pira

We print the speech given at the memorial service of Giorgio La Pira in the Palace of Montecitorio on 25 February 2004.

President of the Republic, parliamentary colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, there is an adjective that fits all aspects of Giorgio La Pira: extraordinary. From when we find him as a young student at the Technical Institute of Messina earning a bit of money, together with his friend Salvatore Quasimodo, by doing the accounts of a minuscule firm of “colonial chemical products and fine wines”. That was when the correspondence began with the Nobel prize-winning poet, in which we find, for example, under the date 12 November 1922 (in the turbulent days of the march on Rome), phrases like these: «We have a shared origin, but different paths; the goal, however, is the same. Let us reach it together at the same time you from poetry me from philosophy – that will be the first step; then let us go on together to Ascesis». In the same long letter it says: «Among the miracles of our salvation there was marked: First, poverty».
Later, when he held the chair of Roman Law, La Pira was to be for many generations of university students not only a renowned teacher but a master of life, especially through that Mass of the poor which he brought to Rome from Florence, himself often attending it on Sundays in the church of San Girolamo della Carità to show affectionate concern to some hundreds of victims of poverty, to whom he said that we students should be thankful because they were teaching us the real philosophy of life. Lively and joyful, the professor had a fitting word for everyone, but especially a reassuring smile.
In the social action of the Federation of Italian Catholic University Students, La Pira was a welcome and incisive guest. I remember him at the National Congress in 1942 in Assisi, at a dramatic moment for Italy, rent by the war then lost, speaking in praise of the peace that constructs and of the love that rebuilds. Steadfast in his thinking, his style was plain; and in the end even the Fortini, the podestà, who had expressed uneasiness on hearing hatred for the English stigmatized, was overwhelmed by La Pira’s charm and hugged him with feeling, when he received from La Pira, to our loud applause, a small Our Lady’s medal.
Later, in his political work, in Parliament, in government and especially when in charge of the city of Florence, about which Mayor Domenici will speak, he was to hinge his teaching and his work on the subordination of the law to the needs of penniless citizens. An economist may wonder whether needs should be matched to possible resources, but not La Pira. There were moments in which this humanism of La Pira’s set him in opposition to the so-called authorities. He did not accept, for example, at a congress, De Gasperi’s objection on the need of matching the programs of development called for by La Pira with tax revenue. La Pira insisted with a firm: «Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas». And he also reacted toughly to the criticisms of Don Sturzo on an alleged underlying economic statism.
Even between two future candidates for beatification there was no softening of tone in their differences of opinion.
When Florence factories in crisis were occupied by the workers he challenged the Prefecture saying: «The Le Cure Foundry will be a real stronghold of resistance to injustice and we shall see who wins».
I myself was the object of a lapidary telegram because I had had to send in the Finance Police to prevent the requisition of tax offices to house the homeless. To get myself forgiven I speeded up the transfer to the city of the Fortezza da Basso, the continuing military proprietorship of which La Pira justly criticized. On that occasion he was even poetic.
I still have his truly original note:
«Ministry of “Defense”: of what? Of the theological “beauty” of the Christian cities: of craftwork creation (on artistic level) in Florence and in all the Italian cities. Ergo: “Fortezza da Basso”: Fortress for the defense and spread of Christian beauty. Reflection of the beauty of God, and of our civilization».
I quote from another letter from him received in January 1973 (La Pira was very prolific in correspondence, always writing by hand, but with typed copy attached to facilitate reading).
Here is the letter.
«The star (of Bethlehem) that led the Magi from the distant confines of the Chinese Wall to Bethlehem now leads the people of the East, their successors, to the chair of Peter (in Rome). Those peoples that is, of which they (the Magi) were the first signposts on the friendly path of salvation, of civilization and peace. These words are not fantasy: history, each day more, proves to us that this is the irreversible course of the history of the world! Today, as yesterday, as tomorrow! Would that Italy might really see that its historical and political destiny is this: to be the bridge that peoples must cross to come into the inevitable Peter’s Square!»
Some of La Pira’s interventions came in at the time and afterwards for critical comments, but I don’t agree with them. And if some details of the trip to China and Vietnam (the secretiveness, the altered passports and other things) can lend themselves to doubts, the idea of the discussions between Christians, Hebrews and Moslems was extraordinarily positive. It was the sowing of a seed that unfortunately has not still adequately burgeoned. But throughout the Arab world those Florentine initiatives have left an indelible mark.
I was very moved when the dead king of Morocco asked me if he, a Moslem, could give witness in the cause for beatification to La Pira, whose long-sightedness had fascinated him, but whose simplicity of life had even more impressed him when visiting him in the small cell at San Marco. But in Israeli circles he was also viewed with respect. I remember the impression gained by the President of the World Zionist Organization, Nahum Goldmann, when La Pira invited him in 1964 to hold the world Jewish Congress in Florence.
Let me also add an unusual episode. There had been within the Atlantic Alliance – always on the issue of deterrence and never as of possibility of attack – the idea of designing a neutron bomb. We were asked by Washington to write to Breznev, challenging his tough criticism on the matter.
From La Pira I received this note:
«Dear Andreotti, listen to me: it’s the second time I do so; thank you for the first time. I start from the conclusion: Andreotti must commit himself also, on behalf of Italy, against the neutron bomb. At any price the arming of the world to destroy it must stop.
Fraternally. Giorgio La Pira».
Shortly afterwards I made a visit to Washington and in discussions I heard with surprise President Carter say that the neutron bomb was the idea of Admiral Rickover, that he didn’t agree with it at all.



La Pira devoted himself to foreign policy with intensity and in an original way.
He felt Florence to be a place called by Providence to construct and live messages of peace. And for him peace was Christian. In a penciled note he passed me on 26 April 1962 during a ceremony in Palazzo Vecchio (and that I have kept) he wrote: «You see, in Florence the boldest things can be done and said framed explicitly within the Christian vision of history; and i.e. with extreme logicality and clarity, as workshop and experiment».
A letter, dated 28 October 1970, belongs to this philosophy of the political hope:
«Perhaps I am not wrong in saying that the Christian Democrats could do a great deal (in Italy and, as offshoot, in the world) if they have the courage to include in their “political conception of history” this precise datum: – war is impossible; global negotiation is inevitable; Italian mediation could really be the great bridge of peace spanning the world!»
Certainly there had been and there were illusions. In a letter dated 21 March 1972, Saint Benedict patron saint of Europe, La Pira wrote me: «Have you read Breznev’s speech? 1972 will certainly be the year of global negotiation: and Italy (after 7 May) will be able to do much to get the negotiation off to a good start! “The path of Isaiah”. No matter what the pseudo-realists say about it».
La Pira as proponent of a “third force”? To be precise, yes; even if in 1949 he had voted for the Atlantic Treaty. In a letter of 20 July 1970, after assuring me that he had prayed for me in the Badia, he said: «To construct the third curtain: between the two curtains of war (Nato and the Warsaw Pact) to construct the third curtain, that of peace: and construct it in Europe: and, in a more specific way, in Italy where the “See of Peter” lies. To construct the “point of attraction of the world” (peace “converting weapons into ploughshares”) and construct it here, in Rome: to close, as Augustus did, the temple of Janus and construct the Altar of Peace (uniting the world, as Augustus did).
This is not “poetry” and “utopia”: it is “the essential history” of today and tomorrow.
With brotherly affection. La Pira».
His committed speech in Leningrad was enclosed and a very handsome letter from Monsignor Helder Câmara the legendary bishop of Recife.
In personal relations La Pira was extraordinary. He had, for example, the text of the famous Khrushchev report – that had so surprised and embarrassed Togliatti - two years before the western world knew of it. He himself confirmed the fact a few days before his death, saying: «Yes, it’s true: the Russian ambassador handed the report to me in a monastery in Florence».



The documentary evidence of La Pira’s outstanding contribution to the making of the Constitution remains. As exemplification, I remember, apart from his 17 March 1947 speech on the Christian social doctrine that according to the dominant culture doesn’t exist, his paper on the “Principles relative to civic relationships”. It is a document on which we should properly dwell in this time of debate about reform. But aside from the shorthand accounts, La Pira’s contribution was extraordinary, not least in contributing to create and maintain a climate of co-operation, without which it is impossible to clarify bearings and ordinances meant to last over time.
A stupendous trait of La Pira’s. Nobody considered him, although he dated letters by the saint of the day and withdrew from union meetings at the Ministry of Labor to read the breviary, as belonging to the clerical order. For that reason also it is right to describe him as extraordinary.
Only he could afford a proposal like the following: «The Ministry of Defense has a budget and spends it on weapons. Why not create an entry for the very effective nuclear weapons of prayer: the strongholds of prayer in Italy and in the world and create new ones in Asia, in Africa, in Latin America? Think on it. The thing is more serious and more technical than one thinks. I know you won’t laugh at this proposal».
I didn’t laugh. Even if I couldn’t follow it up; and later, in a Thai convent of nuns back out of China and camped on the banks of the river Kwai, I was asked by a little nun: how is La Pira?
There was a touching moment here in Montecitorio on 21 December 1947 when he proposed inserting the phrase: «In the name of God the Italian people gives itself the present Constitution». He did it with delicacy, also quoting – in his search for agreement - Mazzini’s “God and the People”. In terms of procedure it was in truth too late, but La Pira created concern and disquiet in everyone. Piero Calamandrei expressed it well: «I am not in disagreement with my colleague and friend La Pira; because, if the point at which we have arrived in our task did not forbid it, I too would have wished that at the beginning of our Constitution there be some word that indicated a call to the Spirit. Because, colleagues, at the end of our task, sometimes difficult and even lamentable, sometimes impoverished, let us say, by crudely political questions, at the end of our task there is nevertheless in our awareness the feeling of having taken part in our work in a solemn and sacred inspiration. It would have been fitting and comforting to express that awareness even in a single phrase, that in our Constitution there is something that goes beyond our persons, an idea that links us to the past and to the future, a religious idea, because everything is religion that demonstrates the momentariness of man but the everlasting nature of his ideals».


On 5 February 1977, having learned that Giorgio La Pira had got worse, I went to Florence to see him in the hope that he get over the crisis. He was very tired. But serene and particularly affectionate. In the evening in Rome I received a telegram he had dictated to Fioretta Mazzei. He assured me of his prayer to the Lord that he might help the government: «To steer the Italian boat that despite terrible anxieties like that of violence and abortion must gain the harbor of fraternity and peace for the defense of the new generations».
He lived on into November and his funeral in Florence was an unforgettable moment of emotion and affection.



In closing, I would like to thank President Casini for having brought me into this solemn recollection of an insuperable teacher of spirituality, of coherence and of life even more than of politics.