A 100 years after Don Sturzo's appeal, Bergoglio wants to remake a pro-migrant and pro-European DC.
Simple nostalgia for the Christian Democracy or attempt to stop Matteo Salvini's League? Maybe a little’ of both, the fact is that for some weeks there has been persistent talk of a forthcoming "Catholics' party".
And the most significant thing is that the direction is set by the bishops. The president of the Italian bishops, Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, he had already talked about it shortly after last year's elections 4 March. Then he called for a more political commitment on the part of the vast network of lay associations and movements already present in society, but he returned to the topic again last year 12 November in his speech to the General Assembly of Italian bishops, also quoting Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo, economist and sociologist who laid the foundations for Christian Democracy at the end of the 19th century, and whose centenary of death has just been celebrated.
Well, Bassetti said about Toniolo, in a situation where Catholics were politically irrelevant and otherwise impeded, he knew how to bring them together around a commitment to work, justice and social peace". And then again a few days ago with an interview with the bishops' newspaper, Future, in which he forcefully relaunches the idea of ​​a forum that brings together all the initiatives of Catholics who are already active in the field of social solidarity. He doesn't speak openly about a real party but that is the final perspective. Bassetti himself has already established the cornerstones of the new aggregation: militant Europeanism and open doors, rather wide open, to immigration.
In the meantime the car has already started moving: at the end of November a conference with the theme of Europe brought together the Community of Sant'Egidio, Acli, Catholic Action and Luigi Sturzo Foundation, with the blessing of Cardinal Bassetti and the bishops' newspaper Avvenire. On 8 December it is the turn of the Insieme association to organize the first national gathering with the theme "Laity for Europe A Together project". At this appointment, openly supported by the bishop emeritus of Prato, Gastone Simoni, the idea of ​​a party is more explicit, which could already be ready for the next local elections in May (but with a little thought for the Europeans). A number of experts participated in the meeting, including the economist Stefano Zamagni and the bioethicist Francesco D'Agostino, which laid the foundations of a programmatic document. In the last few days Pierluigi Castagnetti returned to the field with an interview with Avvenire, who was a member of the DC and last secretary of the Italian People's Party and is very close to the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella.
In short, a group of lay people at work but under the discreet guidance of those "pilot bishops" who, in recent years, in words the Episcopal Conference had sworn there would no longer be any. Actually in Italy, albeit through distinct phases, the leaders of the ecclesiastical hierarchy have always had a strong tendency towards active politics. The dissolution of Christian Democracy at the beginning of the 1990s had left Catholics orphaned of a unified point of reference, and attempts to put the pieces back together have failed miserably. Thus the then president of the bishops, Camillo Ruini, while favoring the relationship with Silvio Berlusconi, he theorized the presence of Catholics in the various parties, centre-right and centre-left, convinced that they could count on a greater number of parliamentarians who would then unite when voting on ethically sensitive laws. An error of perspective: despite the compact participation in the first Family Day of 2007, in Parliament and within the parties things went very differently. Without considering that while the CEI leaders relied on Berlusconi, many bishops and Catholic associations openly supported the left-wing parties. After the unfortunate parenthesis of open support for Mario Monti which had devastating effects for the presence of Catholics in Parliament, more recently it was the secretary of the CEI who took the political ball into his own hands, Monsignor Nunzio Galantino, Pope Francis' trusted man. With Galantino we moved on to direct bishop-party negotiations, essentially the Democratic Party, with which the plenipotentiary of the CEI established a preferential axis, if not exclusive. The entire process that led to the law on civil unions is emblematic: Galantino conducted private negotiations, going against the Catholic base, to the point of openly opposing the two Family Days of 2015 e 2016. The Galantino experiment also proved to be a failure, and now here is the new course in a political climate completely changed by the elections of 4 March. Today the leaders of the Italian Church, also driven by the teaching of Pope Francis, they fuel the idea of ​​growing racism and xenophobia among Italians and fear conflict with European institutions. And here is the new strategy, which is ideally linked to that Appeal to the free and strong with which Don Luigi Sturzo gave the go-ahead to the People's Party, and whose hundredth anniversary will be remembered in January.
But perhaps the bishops do not fully realize that many things have changed since then and that in any case Sturzo's initiative started from the base, by a widespread social presence, often in conflict with hierarchies, while today this appears to be yet another top-level operation, with a program that follows that of the Democratic Party, while many Catholics voted Lega or in any case centre-right – and they are impatient with the pushed and irrational immigrationism advocated by the ecclesiastical hierarchy. «This is an unrealistic project», Stefano Fontana claims bluntly, of the Van Thuan International Observatory on the Social Doctrine of the Church, which paradoxically arrives precisely at the moment in which least concern is given to the political education of Catholics based on the principles of Social Doctrine. How to say: a lot of ideology and little relevance to what the Church has always taught on social issues.
But above all, there are quite a few Catholics who wonder whether it is really the bishops' job to work hard to find political solutions and party structures., forgetting that their mission is to teach Christian doctrine, support Catholic communities in the faith, aware that there is a need for meaning in the heart of every man that transcends material needs and of which material needs are a sign.
source: http://www.ilgiornale.it/news/politica/partito-dei-cattolici-e-grandi-manovre-chiesa-e-vescovi-che-1617186.html?mobile_detect=false