Luigi Sturzo’s Lessons for American Christianity

One hundred years ago, Fr. Luigi Sturzo was settling down in London. He had departed Rome two weeks earlier, on October 25, 1924. Five years earlier, in 1919, he had founded and led the Partito Popolare Italiano, which drew inspiration from the Catholic Church’s social teachings—particularly Rerum Novarum—and decades of Catholic work in Italian society through banks, cooperatives, and more. A few weeks earlier, he had been invited by the Holy See to go abroad for a time. Threats against him were circulating. Sturzo ended up in exile for twenty years.

Though unfamiliar to most Americans, Sturzo’s experience has much to offer contemporary debates within American Christianity. Sturzo’s Italy was marked by a culture war no less intense than today’s. Italian Catholics felt that modern society and government were hostile to Christianity. Many Catholics and non-Catholics, particularly in the working class, believed society was run by self-interested bureaucrats indifferent to the real needs of ordinary people. Many Catholics were thus very skeptical, even despairing, of modernity, liberalism, and the liberal state.

Sturzo deserves attention for the political proposal he advanced in that context: a way between liberalism, fascism, and integralism, rooted in Catholic social doctrine and the rich experience of Catholic service in civil society. His political story also has much to teach about the risk of seeking a re-Christianization of society through top-down solutions and the pursuit of cultural hegemony by means of political power.

Luigi Sturzo and Christian Democracy

Luigi Sturzo was born in Caltagirone, Sicily, in 1871, in a Kingdom of Italy whose relationship with the Church was fraught with tension. When he was born, a united Italy had existed for barely a decade. For centuries, the Italian peninsula had been divided into various kingdoms and republics, governed by local institutions, dynasties, or foreign powers. After the French Revolution, ideals of liberté, egalité, and nationhood spread, leading to a movement that, by 1861, unified most of the peninsula and proclaimed the King of Piedmont, Victor Emmanuel II, as King of Italy. In 1870, just before Sturzo’s birth, the Italian army invaded the Papal States, ending centuries of papal temporal power.

The problematic Church-state relationship at the time of Sturzo’s birth was not solely due to the loss of the Papal States. In the 1850s, the Piedmontese government enacted laws that dissolved religious orders deemed obsolete and fostered an anti-modern culture of unproductivity. The laws reflected a broader trend of subordinating the Church to state authority. The papacy reacted with the 1864 Syllabus of Errors, which condemned such views on Church-state relations, as well as religious indifferentism, the toleration of non-Catholic worship in Catholic countries, and more. The document closed denying that the pope could “reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism, and modern civilization.”

After the September 1870 Capture of Rome, the situation worsened. Pius IX declared himself a “prisoner in the Vatican,” rejecting the Italian state. For about five decades, popes remained confined to the Vatican, insisting on the need for some degree of temporal power and autonomy: as spiritual leader of Catholics across the globe, the pope could not be subject to any particular state. Strikingly, with Non Expedit (1874), the pope prohibited Catholics from voting in national elections. The “Roman Question” remained unresolved for nearly sixty years.

Sturzo was thus born into an Italian state that many Catholics rejected; but by 1871, this state was a fait accompli. His generation knew only a unified Italy, and he, along with other Catholics, began doubting the wisdom of simply rejecting the liberal state. These Catholics called themselves “Christian Democrats.” Though “Christian Democracy” may bring to readers’ minds major European center-right parties after World War II, the term actually originated during the decades of Non Expedit.[1] Christian Democrats viewed participation in democratic institutions as an opportunity to shape them according to the Church’s social doctrine, protect freedom of education, and contribute to the common good by addressing the needs of the working class and the rural South. A key figure in this movement was Fr. Romolo Murri, whom Sturzo met as a young priest studying in Rome. Sturzo was attracted to Murri’s call for Catholic engagement with modern society and politics and began contributing to his journal Cultura Sociale, writing about the hardships of Southern society, which was increasingly drawn to the false promises of socialism.

But Christian Democracy emerged at a delicate time: the modernist crisis. Even Leo XIII—who in Rerum Novarum urged Catholics to address modern society’s needs—resisted innovative political projects. In 1901, he condemned Christian Democracy. Murri still launched an electoral list and was excommunicated for over thirty years. Here his path and Sturzo’s diverged. Obedient to the pontiff, Sturzo preferred to wait for a riper moment to advocate for a new political approach.

He ultimately contributed to the fall of Non Expedit. After his Roman experience, Sturzo returned to Sicily and (since Non Expedit did not apply to local elections) was elected pro-mayor of Caltagirone in 1905, leading the town until 1920. During his tenure, he implemented the principles of Rerum Novarum by combating corruption in a mafia-strong town, and promoting mutual aid associations and Catholic cooperatives. Building on this local success, in 1918 he presented a new political formation to Pope Benedict XV. His proposal gained traction and, in 1919, Non Expedit was lifted.

Immediately after, Sturzo published the “Appeal to the Free and the Strong,”[2] which presented the program of the new Partito Popolare Italiano, of which Sturzo was secretary. The PPI aimed at working within the liberal and democratic institutions to reform them according to the teachings of the Church’s social doctrine.

Make no mistake, Sturzo was not an uncritical supporter of liberalism, and he did not idolize democracy. He frequently criticized liberalism. In a 1902 speech, he argued that liberal ideology had

monopolized for its own goals noble notions of liberty and nation, and exaggerated the first, reducing it to atomistic, . . . antisocial individualism, and reduced the second to a pagan conception of the homeland, represented in a pantheistic, centralizing and all-encompassing state.[3]

Democracy he characterized as potentially “disheveled and disorganized,” as during the French Revolution when, “in the excitement of newness, it devolved into violent demagoguery.” Sturzo’s preference for democracy was not absolute: “if [democracy] is dying of an incurable disease, let it die! It will end up in the cemetery, alongside . . . feudalism, monarchies, divine right.”[4] In politics, Sturzo rejected all absolutist claims: “we deny that, in the present life, we will ever get to a perfect state, a definitive conquest, an absolute good.” Any political system would always be a “mixture of . . . truth and errors.”[5]

Although liberalism had distorted liberty, Sturzo believed liberty remained a precious good, as did popular participation in political life:

It is said that freedom is abused: it’s true; but what gift from God is not abused by men? The intellect is abused, strength is abused. . . . Nonetheless, the goods that nature bestows are not, in themselves, condemnable and should not be denied to the rightful enjoyment and rational needs of creatures.[6]

Sturzo similarly praised a “political system that engages the entire people, organized on a basis of liberty for the common good” as the “highest ideal of democracy, as it should be pursued in civil and Christian countries.”[7] He criticized early-modern absolutism for excluding people from public life and suppressing liberty, thus causing the Age of Revolutions. He claimed modern democracy should learn from earlier, positive, and not anti-Christian experiences of popular participation, such as the comuni in medieval Italy.

Sturzo’s political views were rooted in an eminently Christian understanding of human nature as a “mix of good and evil, light and shadow”—sinful, yet called to freely pursue communion with God. He also saw men as social, meant to contribute to ordered political community, where each could fulfill their calling to love God.[8] This awareness of man’s limitations and social nature gave him confidence in democracy’s potential. In democracy, the liberty of the people and the rulers balanced each other. Catholics should view democracy as an opportunity, not a threat.

Opportunity for what? Sturzo did not explicitly invoke the “principle of subsidiarity”—a term introduced in the 1931 encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, though the concept was in Rerum Novarum—but encouraged Catholics to reform the liberal state in that direction. His “Appeal” called for replacing “a centralizing state . . . with a truly popular one, recognizing the limits of its activity, respecting natural nuclei and organisms—family, classes, municipalities . . . and encouraging private initiatives.”[9]

Sturzo’s subsidiary view of the state placed significant limits on its role in regulating social and economic life, while still assigning it an important function. The principle of subsidiarity encompasses both a negative aspect (restricting state intervention in civil society) and a positive one (where the state regulates, supports, and supplements civil society’s actions—see Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church §186). Sturzo understood subsidiarity’s dual nature clearly. He defended economic liberty and was a tireless critic of statist centralization, bureaucratization, and monopolies that stifled private enterprise. But he also criticized unrestrained capitalism and an atomistic understanding of economic freedom. He lamented that society was dominated by bourgeois values of prosperity that failed to satisfy the soul and made society individualistic and selfish. His subsidiary view of the state allowed for a minimalist welfare state to support or supplement civil society in meeting people’s needs.[10]

Above all, Sturzo believed that Catholics’ political action should pursue liberty of education. What the world needed most was the “formation of Christian—genuinely Christian—consciences, united in their public and private life, in the intimacy of their souls and in the extrinsic expressions of their human energies.”[11] Sturzo valued human liberty but did not entertain illusions of human infallibility; liberty needs to be educated. Education he regarded as even more necessary than social change, though the latter was essential for access to education.

The cooperatives that he helped to establish in Sicily provided workers with religious and civic formation, not just material aid.

To achieve these goals, Sturzo did not see a confessional state as necessary. He emphasized that the missions of the Church and political institutions are distinct, condemning old alliances between throne and altar and Christians’ faith in the Austrian Empire as the last bastion of that alliance.

He also denied that Catholics needed a confessional party. The party he founded was called “Popular”—not Catholic. Sturzo envisioned the PPI as a political home for Catholics and anyone who valued its program. The party did not depend on Church hierarchies and did not make resolving the “Roman Question” a precondition for Catholic political engagement. Sturzo believed the Holy See should negotiate with the Italian state on the “Roman Question.” The aconfessionality of the PPI allowed it to do so while remaining independent from the fallible efforts of a party in the chaotic realm of politics.

Under Benedict XV, the party received moderate support from the Holy See, which encouraged bishops to back it. In the November 1919 election, less than a year after its founding, the PPI secured 20.6% of the vote, second to the socialists at 32.3%.

Sturzo and the Italian Church Face the Rise of Fascism

However, Sturzo and the PPI faced criticism, including from within the Catholic community. A prominent critic was Agostino Gemelli, a Franciscan friar and soon founder of the Catholic University of Milan. Along with his associate, Mons. Francesco Olgiati, Gemelli published in 1919 an essay titled The Program of the PPI: What it is not and should be. The two criticized the PPI’s aconfessionality as a sign of cowardice and “lack of Christian soul.” Gemelli and Olgiati argued the PPI was “relegating Jesus to the attic,” “limiting itself to a program of small reforms,” rather than “agitating the maximalist program.”[12] Rather than reforming the liberal state, Catholics should aim to “destroy it and bring about the Christian state.”[13] As historian Maria Bocci writes, Gemelli viewed “politics as an instrument for the triumph of religion”; he “attributed to politics a quasi-religious value, while highlighting the civil function of Christianity.”[14]

For Gemelli, Catholics should look to the Middle Ages as a model. “We are medievalists,” he wrote in a 1914 article that launched the academic journal Vita e Pensiero. He contrasted the medieval era, when Christianity influenced all aspects of life, with the modern age, which he viewed as reverting to paganism. Gemelli urged readers to find in the Middle Ages the energy for a “Catholic reconquest.” He mocked those “lukewarm friends” who, despite recognizing “the greatness of the medieval Church,” advocated caution and claimed “prudence is a virtue.” For Gemelli, those who pursued “a slow work of penetration in society, meant to introduce many . . . to the beauty and the greatness of Christianity,” were simply settling for “average ideas, which—it’s well known—have the great fortune of easily gaining the consensus of the majority.”

Gemelli is relevant to Sturzo’s exile because his criticism partly fueled, in Catholic public opinion, the sense that the PPI was too moderate in opposing liberalism. This sense eventually led him—and many others—to believe that working with the Fascist regime would be more convenient to the Church than supporting the PPI. Gemelli was also a much-heeded advisor for Benedict XV’s successor, Pius XI (1922-1939), whose attitude towards Fascism played an important role in Sturzo’s departure.

Of course, Fascism is inherently incompatible with Christianity, and Benito Mussolini could only envision the relationship between the Fascist state and the Church as one of subordination of the latter to the first. Since the beginning of his career in socialist ranks, he called religion a psychiatric disease, Christianity a religion for cowards, and criticized socialists who baptized their children. He championed violence and revolution both as a socialist and after his 1914 break with socialism. His Fascist movement, founded in 1919, initially adopted strong anti-clerical positions, advocating confiscation of Church property. Most importantly, Fascist ideology viewed the state as a quasi-religious entity, claiming total authority over education. Fascist doctrine, as presented by Mussolini and Giovanni Gentile (the “philosopher of Fascism”) in a 1932 essay, “accepte[d] the individual only insofar as his interests coincide[d] with those of the state,” which represented “the conscience and the universal.” Of that conscience, Mussolini was the quasi-divine embodiment. In the 1930s, the regime issued Fascist decalogues including articles such as: “One thing must be dear to you above all: the life of the Duce.”

None of this was unknown to Pius XI or Gemelli. Both understood the Fascist idolatry of the state. From the early days of Fascism, Gemelli recognized its incompatibility with Catholic social doctrine. Under the regime, Gemelli promoted devotion to the “regality of Christ” among Italian Catholics. For these reasons, the regime distrusted Gemelli and surveilled him and the Catholic University. As we shall see, the Holy See was also critical of Fascism.

Thus, while historians have sometimes simplistically portrayed Gemelli and Pius XI as examples of an ideological marriage between the clergy and Fascism, this characterization is flawed: Gemelli sought a Christian state, not a Fascist one. And, in a 1932 dialogue with Mussolini, Pius XI declared that he wanted a “Catholic totalitarianism.”[15]

Yet, some studies (for example, by Giovanni Sale[16]) show that, despite awareness of the anti-Christian nature of Fascism (and partly because of their project of Catholic hegemony) figures such as Gemelli and Pius XI ended up, especially in the 1920s, putting their hope in Fascism rather than the PPI. How did Mussolini lure them?

Mussolini cleverly drove Catholics into a trap: he sensed their discontent and crafted a portrayal of Fascism that seemed to align with Catholic interests. He repeatedly promised to protect Catholicism, popular piety, and Italy’s Catholic tradition. He pledged to reject liberal anticlericalism and maintain “friendly relationships” with the Church.[17] A key education reform—the 1923 Gentile Reform—introduced Catholic theology in public schools, placing crucifixes in classrooms, and accrediting degrees from Gemelli’s Catholic University. This calculated move successfully drew many Catholics away from the PPI, persuading them that the Church could gain more by engaging with Fascism.

Additionally, Fascism promised to protect the Church from its most frightening enemy: socialism. Fear of socialism was rampant following the wave of strikes of the “Red Biennium” of 1919-1920. The success of the Russian Revolution alarmed Catholics, who worried that the same might happen in Italy. Mussolini exploited this fear, intensifying anti-socialist rhetoric and presenting himself as the savior from communism.

Mussolini’s strategy worked. As historian Emilio Gentile has written, Pius XI and “the majority of conservative Catholics” appreciated the “defeat that fascism had inflicted upon socialism, as well as the one it was preparing to inflict upon liberalism.”[18] After the 1922 March on Rome and Mussolini’s appointment as Prime Minister, the journal Civiltà Cattolica (reviewed and approved by the Holy See) reminded Catholics of their duty to any “legitimately constituted authority,” even if “faulty in some ways.” Gemelli and Pius XI maintained (in historian Sale’s words) a “benevolent, wait-and-see” attitude.[19] In the following years, they sought peaceful coexistence with the regime, believing it was in the interest of the Church, of the survival of the Catholic University, and the preservation of public order.

What makes Pius XI and Gemelli’s acceptance of the regime particularly striking is that it developed amid widespread Fascist violence against Catholic associations. Initially, Fascist violence targeted socialists. As concern grew about competition from the PPI, they increasingly attacked PPI members, offices, and Catholic organizations. In 1923, Fr. Giovanni Minzoni, a PPI member and priest, was beaten to death by Fascist “blackshirts” after a clash over his resolution to start a boy scout chapter. This violence was well known to the Italian public, and by 1921, Civiltà Cattolica described it as an “anti-Christian persecution.”[20]

Fascism’s authoritarian aims were increasingly evident. In 1924, Mussolini’s government passed the Acerbo Law, which allocated two-thirds of parliamentary seats to the party winning the most votes, even if less than 50%—an attempt to ensure Fascist control of Parliament after the 1924 elections.

During the debates leading to the approval of the Acerbo Law, Sturzo became a prominent opponent of Fascism. He recognized that Fascism aimed at “the totalitarian transformation of every moral, cultural, political, and religious force into this new conception: the Fascist one.” He warned that Fascism would monopolize education through its organizations for youth, women, and veterans, reducing Catholicism to a “national religion” and “instrument of power.”[21]

These concerns led Sturzo to consider collaboration between Catholics and reformist socialists. In 1921, Italian socialists had split into a communist party and a reformist one. The reformists rejected the dictatorship of the proletariat and the need for violence and revolution; they argued that capitalist oppression should be addressed through democratic institutions, by shaping workers’ political consciousness, winning elections, and passing reforms. In September 1924, in an article in the PPI journal Il Popolo Sturzo emphasized the distinction between communists and reformist socialists and expressed openness to limited collaboration with the latter, highlighting that Fascism posed a greater threat to Italy’s constitutional and “moral unity.”[22]

Despite Fascism’s violence, authoritarianism, and anti-Christian ideology, many Catholics—including in the Holy See—believed that it was the best viable option for the Church. Officially, the Vatican maintained neutrality in the April 1924 election, as it had since the PPI’s founding. However, in private correspondence with the pope, Fr. Enrico Rosa, director of Civiltà Cattolica, wrote that it seemed a “lesser evil—that is, in the present conditions, a good—that the Fascists will remain in power rather than other parties, either worse or weaker.” The Vatican should hope that the PPI would outvote the socialists, he wrote. But it seemed “an evil or at least a danger (and in any case unlikely) that the PPI would win the majority and governing responsibilities”: “religion would suffer more than under the Fascists.”[23] Many Catholics shared this view, and several pro-Fascist Catholic journals and groups emerged. Fascism won the 1924 elections with 66.3% of the votes. Neglecting a long tradition of Catholic thought on the legitimacy of resistance including figures like John of Salisbury, Thomas Aquinas, and Francisco Suarez, the pope through Civiltà Cattolica reiterated Christians’ duty of obedience to authorities and condemned any collaboration with socialists.

The Church had (albeit reluctantly) accepted a regime that sought to subordinate it to its interests, sacrificing the PPI in the process. In July 1923, the Holy See asked him to resign as party secretary after the Fascists threatened to occupy all Roman parishes if the PPI challenged the Acerbo Law. Threats against Sturzo continued in Fascist newspapers in 1924. In the fall, concerned that an attack on Sturzo could lead to a clash with the government, the Vatican invited him to go abroad and provided a passport. He departed from Rome on October 25, 1924.

The next two years saw an acceleration of Fascism’s control over Italian politics. In 1924 Mussolini told a friend, “this is the last time we hold elections; next time, I’ll vote for all Italians.”[24] Multi-party elections did not return until 1946. In 1926, following an assassination attempt on Mussolini, he passed an emergency bill suppressing all political parties.

It took time for many Italian Catholics to question their support for Mussolini, which peaked after the signing of the Concordat on February 11, 1929, which established the Vatican State and resolved the “Roman Question.” Two days later, Pius XI praised Mussolini at the Catholic University of Milan, describing him as “a man such as the one that Providence has enabled us to meet; a man who does not have the preoccupations of the Liberal school.”[25] Gemelli publicly praised and expressed gratitude to the regime on numerous occasions.

Yet, contemporary reports suggested that Pius XI struggled to sleep in the weeks after the Concordat, fearing he may have made a mistake.[26] The conflict between Fascism’s goals and the Church’s mission came to a head in 1931 during the Catholic Action crisis. The regime publicly attacked Catholic Action’s educational and cultural activities, seizing Catholic newspapers and suppressing its circles. In response, Pius XI issued the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno, defending the Church’s educational freedom and condemning pagan statolatry, though avoiding an explicit condemnation of Fascism.

As the 1930s progressed, Sturzo’s doubts about Fascism as a Christian ally were confirmed. In a December 1935 memorandum, Mons. Domenico Tardini, an advisor to Pius XI, described Fascist Italy as a “people of sheep” and an “assemblage of slaves,” stating that Fascism had “destroyed any liberty of action and discussion.” He added, “The Church cannot trust in so many souls who are taken by the demon of Nationalism and believe Mussolini more than the Pope.”[27] This realization led Pius XI, between 1934 and 1937, to ask his collaborators to draft a text condemning nationalism, racism, and totalitarianism; this work later informed the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge and the unfinished draft of Humani generis. Additionally, starting in 1940, Gemelli promoted private meetings at the Catholic University to formulate a political project for post-Fascist Italy and hosted meetings of the National Liberation Committee, which led resistance to Nazi-Fascism.

Conclusion

What led to the failure of Sturzo’s political experience in the short term? Besides Fascist pressure, the weakness of Catholic support can be attributed to:

· fear of socialism, as many saw Fascism as a lesser evil;
· fear of chaos in a highly polarized political environment, which led many to welcome Mussolini’s promise to restore order;
· a misplaced hope that Mussolini could be controlled within a constitutional framework;
· a project of Catholic hegemony, which led some Catholics to believe that the Fascist state could serve as a tool or ally in achieving a Christian state, despite Fascism’s very different aims.

Sturzo’s story serves as a reminder of the dangers of politicizing Christianity. It cautions against relying on political projects, self-proclaimed saviors, or idealized visions of a pre-modern union of throne and altar to restore Christian values. It urges Christians to carefully consider their alliances when working to re-Christianize society.

More importantly, Sturzo deserves attention for his political proposal: deeply rooted in a Christian view of man and the Church’s social doctrine, his project addressed problems in liberal and capitalist society while building on classical and Christian traditions valuing popular participation and limited government. His example might offer guidance to contemporary Christians who care about Christian education and the freedom of the Church, and who believe that conversion is a fruit of divine grace and witnesses of mature faith and charity, rather than a result of coercion or political agendas.

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