Our Roman Letter

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XLIX, Issue 40, 12 October 1922, Page 19

Our Roman Letter

(By ‘‘Stannous.’’)

We have had a very hot summer here. In .the early days of August we were almost -suffocated by a heat wave. Every day for nearly, a week the day temperature was over 100 degrees in-the shade, and for many days afterwards the mercury-rarely fell below 90 degrees. Even the pious Romans felt the exceptional heat, and there were several cases of death from heat apoplexy. Despite the unfavorable conditions the übiquitous tourist was frequently to be seen strolling along with his guide-book, impervious alike to the blazing rays of the sun and to the murmured pity of the surprised Italians. I often wonder why visitors come here in the summer months. It is scarcely the best time for seeing the sights of Eomw. Besides,, exposure to an August sun is not without danger here. Yet, still'the tourists come, complaining that the shops are closed in the middle of the day and generally blaming the Romans as a lazy people. The'wiser Romans on their part courteously shrug their shoulders and murmur a little prayer that God may temper the sun’s rays to the unthinking stranger- lest, standing unsheltered s beneath a blazing unnative sky, he suffer because of his folly. To the dwellers by the Tiber the wondrous ways of the tourist are sometimes beyond the bounds of human understanding. Wherefore in their Christian charity they commend him to the mercy of God. The passing months have been very remarkable ones in the history of Italy. They have been months especially interesting to those of us here who watch with sympathy the political career of Don Luigi Sturzo, the life and soul of the movement that has come to be known as Popolarismo. In this exciting period of political change he has been the one protagonist who seems ever to profess something definite and clear-cut and positive, the one thinker who appears to know exactly what ho wants. As the prevailing national difficulty develops, other leaders rise and fall. As the after-war problems become more and more insistent, other political groups unexpectedly achieve momentary power and then as suddenly, are lost to greatness. But Sturzo remains. Indeed, he is at leash as powerful to-day** at least as menacing a figure to his political opponents, as when three years ago he first launched his Partita Popolare Italiano into the stormy seas of Italian political life. And the party which owes to him the foundation of its being, the formulation of its aims, the unfailing inspiration of its parliamentary" life, stands thus far justified by reason of the honorable successes with which its activities have hitherto been crowned. Luigi Sturzo was born in the town of Caltagirone in Sicily on November 26, 1871, his parents being Felice Sturzo and Catherine Boscarelli, both of whom are long since dead. It is not without interest to recall the fact that his father’s brother was at one time well-known in the convents of Ireland as a Jesuit preacher of community Retreats; this Father Sturzo was later transferred to Australia where ho was Master of Novices in the Jesuit Novitiate and where eventually he. died after a long and fruitful ilfe of, priestly labor. -Luigi, his famous nephew, . was one of a family of five, children, three of whom were girls. Of the two boys, both became priests. The elder brother, Mario, has long been Bishop of the Diocese of Piazza Armerina in his native Sicily; he is not without renown as an able writer of spiritual works of high literary, value, and one of his books, La conquistn del fine (1907, is dedicated to his brother Luigi. Luigi went through - the ordinary • course of. the aspirant for the priesthood,‘ doing his - ecclesiastical,studies at the Sicilian

seminaries of Noto and. Caltagirone • he .Wasordained priest on May 19, 1894. Subsequently he / came»to -Rome and, read a post-graduate course in theology at 'the: Gregorian ! University, where he took 1 his doctorate in the summer of the year 1898. Through his study "windows the young? Sicilian > I priest had impatiently watched the war of 'different political ideals among the loosely organised' Catholics of Italy. And when his studies were finished he .rose from; his desk and went down into the midst of the strife. The eight years following his Gregorian doctorate were busy years in Don ; Sturzo’s life. They wpre" years of intense study of sociological needs, and years of untiring propaganda! In the social and political activities of Italian Catholics he allied himself with the forces of democracy ; opposed' to him and his were the older and more conservative Catholics. The ever-growing section to which Don Sturzo belonged was called the party of the Christian Democrats. Iheir basic piinciplo was a thorough-going recognition of the distinction between the religious activities of Catholics .and the political .activities of Catholics; safeguarding always the demands of the individual conscience, they drew a line of distinction between the Catholic as a child of the Church and the Catholic as a citizen of the State." The Conservatives on the other hand refused to admit in practice any such distinction; their political programme, in so far as they may be said to have had ' any definite ' programme / at all, was negative rather than positive, representing a fixed and constant tendency to be content with the little they had rather than to risk the smallest loss by inopportune demands for something new. To the younger generation of Italian Catholics — men like Angelo Mauri, Filippo Meda, and Don Luigi Sturzo—this conservative , standpoint was 'intelligible only as a crime against their Catholic heritage. To Don Sturzo par- '- ticularly, the timidity of the Conservatives was little short of maddening; with his youthful vision of the organisation of the forces of labor, with his dreams of the practical) development of the idea of social co-operation, with his hopes for the deepening and widening of democratic life ; according to the principles of Christian justice, he saw in. - the Conservative an obstacle, if not an enemy, in the path of social progress. Wherefore during those eigiit busy years of study and of organisation he was not content with calling on the neutral Catholics throughout the"? country to rally to the standard of Christian Democracy but he poured scorn and ridicule on the timorous Con-1 servative who feared to claim his just rights as a citizen and who hesitated to take his natural place in the political! life of the country. Basing his authority on Pope Leo’s - great Encyclical Berum Novarum, he finally . demanded from the Catholics of Italy the immediate formation of a Catholic Party the democratic aims of which should always be inspired by Christian principles. But he spoke out of due time. His proposal was judged ■' inopportuneby the ecclesiastical authorities. And in 1905 Don Sturzo, obediently retired from the political life of Italy to the municipal activity of the town where he was bom. v , v In that same year (1905) Don Sturzo was elected! Acting-Mayor of Caltagirone, and for 15 years—l9os-1920 his active brain and skilful hand guided the administrative affairs of his native Commune. So marked was his success ’ that when he laid down the responsibilities of local administration the prosperity of Caltagirone called forth not only the praise of his personal friends but also the admiration,.of his political* foes. The Sturzo rule " completely altered the financial outlook of the Commune, , changing : a relatively largo municipal debt into a growing; credit" balance. It gave the Commune an electrical system, constructed several new roads and streets, rebuilt the Seminary and the official residence of the Bishop, erected commodious ...dwellings for the workers, re-organised the local ‘ educa-tion-d system,: doubled the number of primary schools, and finally, enriched the town with a? Technical Institute, an. establishment for the scientific growth and treatment of ; olives, a/school of ceramics, and a tuberculosis hospital; ' and besides all this, it saved for Caltagirone the famous; cork woods of Santopietro, During those years of : a busy local administration, ■ the young communal vofficial' took part in municipal conferences up and! down Italy, and there is scarcely an aspect of civic life that his unwearying ■activity, has not thrown light on. Looking through ’ the details of ; his work one- cannot but be . amazed at his . 'k '■■k

versatility. '■ From criticisms of ’ the problems of rural sanitation to schemes for the establishment of & county police, from, studies on the legal price of corn to suggestions for overcoming the difficulties pf a deficient road-system, from complaints as to governmental neglect of .the housing problem to measures for the reform of local taxation, from one such exhaustive - treatment to' another one’s mind travels in unaccustomed wonder. ■■ And through it all, ho was the implacable foe of State centralisation. His unswerving aim was . the establishment of local autonomy,- His dream was . the ultimate realisation in each municipal unit, as far as was compatible with the just demands' of. the State,' of that government of the people and by the people and'for the people which is the essences of the democratic organisation of society. ' But during those crowded years he was waiting for the dawn of. his inevitable day, patiently and confidently watching for that immancahile domain the hope of which had upheld him in the day of defeat long ago. His chance came, with the cessation of hostilities after the Great War. On November 4, 1918, Italy entered upon the armistice. Exactly a week later Don Stnrzo made his appeal to the country in an article published in a Roman daily on the problems of the After-War. Six days afterwards, on November 17, he electrified all : Italy by a wonderful speech at Milan. This 'Milan speech was to the Catholics a veritable call to arms. Its essential political merit lies in the fact that it brought home to Italians the pressing necessity of a reconquest of individual liberty against tho State invasion of citizen rights which had gone, on unchecked during the war. The opportunism of the appeal was not lost on prominent Catholics throughout Italy, and immediately men flocked to the standard of the new leader. During the remaining weeks of that anxious November and even into the new year informal conferences were being held under the chairmanship of the Sicilian priest, till finally, on the night of January 17, 1919, a few men met in Rome round his sick bed and definitely framed the constitution of what was to he a new Parliamentary party. The word went forth through the country and provisional committees were formed in all the principal cities, and towns. Meanwhile Don Sturzo was kept busy in his work of detailed propaganda and organisation. The result of all this activity was the famous Congress at Bologna in the second week of June, 1919, where the new movement first gave testimony of its strength before all Italy. But the real trial came in the autumn of that same year when tho nominees of the new party faced the electors. Their wonderful success is now matter of Italian political history; they captured 100 seats. Since that hour the Popular Party has lost none of its public strength. And to-day it is represented in Parliament by 106 Deputies, three of whom are in the Cabinet and one other of whom is an under-Secretary. ■ Tho. Par tit o Popolare Italiano is a democratic party, founded and organised and inspired by the political genius of a Catholic priest, composed of. Catholics of every rank or social station, and based on the immutable principles of Christian justice. Why, therefore, is it not called the Catholic Party? Let Don Sturzo himself reply. Speaking at the Congress- of Bologna on the constitution and aims of the new party he made this statement;- — “It is futile to ask why we do not call ourselves the Catholic Party, The two terms are mutually opposed. Catholicism is a religion, it is universal. A party is a political thing, it implies a. division. From the very beginning we have been careful to exclude, religion from our official coat-of-arms, and we have been clearly desirous of taking a definite stand as [a[political party which has for its direct object the public life of the Nation.' It would be illogical to conclude from this that we share the error of liberalism, which regards religion as a simple affair of the individual conscience and seeks therefore in the .secularist state a purely ethical foundation, of public morality. On the contrary, this is the very thing we fight against when we seek in religion--the vivifying spirit of all individual and collective human life. But we cannot change our nature as : a political party. ■ We v have,- no = authority to speak in the name of the. Church.:, We cannot be a product of any ecclesiastical body, nor can we depend . on such ' a body. Neither in Parliament nor out : of it, neither in the internal organisation of., the Party nor. in

the battles. wo shall be called upon to wage with (political foes, can we call on the forces of the Church to strength or ,to reinforce our political action. We must and can fight our battles in our own name alone, and on ' the same ground as the parties to whom wo are opposed.” Somehow that definite pronouncement cleared! the air considerably. While it left the new- party free to pursue its special political activities, .it refused to saddle the ecclesiastical authorities with any responsibility for its doings. In view of the delicate relation between Church and State in Italy, that , bravo statement is little short of a stroke of genius. It won thousands of adherents for Don Sturzo. One cannot but wish him well. I like to think of that incident of which one of ; his closest friends tells us: how one midnight in that anxious week in the January of 1919, after a long evening’s deliberations, he brought his friends to the Church of the Twelve Apostles where Exposition of the Blessed Sacrament was being held and how ho bade them kneel and pray that God might bless their movement and shower His graces on the activities of the Partita Popolare. I cannot do better than re-echo that humble prayer.