Fr. Luigi Sturzo (1871-1959)
Priest, Social Catholic, Politician, Scholar, Servant of God
In my most recent post, I discussed some of the early social Catholics in Italy from the years surrounding the 1891 publication of Pope Leo XIII’s Rerum novarum: On Capital and Labor, and continuing into the early twentieth century. These social Catholics recognized that they must participate in the political process on behalf of the working class, or the Church would continue to lose ground to the socialists. Italian Catholics were largely prevented from doing so, however, by an 1868 papal decree, by ongoing nostalgia for a lost Christendom, and by the paternalistic presuppositions of clergy and aristocrats as discussed in my previous post.
In this post, I will offer some introductory remarks on the life and work of Don Luigi Sturzo (1871-1959), an Italian priest and social Catholic who rose to prominence through his founding of the Italian People’s Party (PPI) in 1919.1 This founding was a key step on the path to the Christian democracy that would bring relative peace and prosperity to Europe after the Second World War. I hope to revisit Sturzo in a future post as I continue to study his works, many of which are available online in the Italian original.
[Don Luigi Sturzo in 1919, Wikipedia]
Formation for Social Apostolate
Key early experiences alerted the young Sturzo of the need for, and potential contours of, his apostolate as a social Catholic. The first was his sickly youth, which prevented him for a time from going to school but made him sympathetic to the suffering of others. He was eventually able to attend seminary (1883-94) and proved himself an exemplary student. While there he benefitted from “the enlightened guidance of the social bishop Giovanni Blandini”2 and was ordained in 1894. He continued studies at Sapienza University in Rome and the Academy of St. Thomas Aquinas while also teaching philosophy, sociology, law, Italian and sacred chant3 at the seminary in his hometown of Caltagirone. He eventually earned a doctorate from the Gregorian University in 1898.
Another formative experience was seeing “the harsh repression of Sicilian sulfur miners and peasants in the 1890s,” which motivated him to work for their political organization.4 A related experience was what Paul Misner describes as “severe agrarian disturbances” that Sturzo witnessed in his native Sicily. These “brought socialist leaders like Giuseppe De Felice to prominence” (249)5 and made evident the need for a Catholic response. Yet another decisive experience was Sturzo’s graduate studies in Rome, where he “came into contact with such figures as [Giuseppe] Toniolo, [Romolo] Murri, and Radini Tedeschi, who introduced him to the energetic world of Leonine Social Catholicism in its Christian democratic phase” (249).
Sturzo’s Early Social Apostolate in Sicily
Sturzo’s time in Rome helped him to understand the intricacies of a situation in which Rerum novarum’s endorsement of government intervention to remedy socio-economic injustices was inspiring social Catholics to participate in the democratic political process, but they were prevented from doing so in Italy because of the 1868 non expedit decree of Pope Pius IX. Misner describes how Sturzo “found the centralized structure of the OC [Opera dei Congressi] was just what was needed to penetrate the clerical and clientalistic torpor” (249) that prevented Catholics from addressing the social injustices that were afflicting the people. With the prestige and official backing of the OC, he was able to “start a movement of social reform independent of the landowners who dominated Sicilian life through their land-rental agents and other hangers-on” (249).
“As early as 1895, before he was finished with his doctoral work in Rome, with the determined support of his bishop and older priest-brother, Sturzo founded the parish committees of the OC in and around his hometown of Caltagirone. They soon got into the business of organizing farmworkers, artisans, and youth” (249). In 1897 he established a rural bank, a mutual cooperative, and a bi-weekly political-social newspaper called La croce di Costantino.
“The newspaper aroused the ire of the Freemasons because of the straightforward and courageous method that Luigi Sturzo used to obtain consensus, so on September 20, 1897 they burned a copy of the newspaper in the main square of Caltagirone.”6 Already by 1900, Sturzo was widely recognized as a founder of Italian Christian democracy; he declined to join the party led by Romolo Murri, however, who was less winsome in his relations with the hierarchy. “When the first strike of Sicilian peasants under Catholic auspices broke out in 1901, Sturzo supported it in his editorials” (249).
Sturzo’s founding of parish committees of the OC was opportune as Pius X dissolved the national umbrella organization in 1904 and left “its diocesan committees to carry on under the individual control of local bishops”(248)7 which was consistent with Sturzo’s parish-based approach.
Sturzo’s Engagement in Italian Politics
Sturzo’s decision to support strikes was a significant step as they had previously been employed only by socialists. He crossed another threshold that is not feasible today. That is, he held various political offices including a seat on town council in 1902, an appointment as provincial councilor of Catania in 1905, as deputy mayor of Caltagirone from 1905-1920, and as president of the National Association of Italian Municipalities in 1912, besides becoming General Secretary of the Central Council of Italian Catholic Action in 1915. He would receive special honors from the Italian state in his later years.
After almost a decade of work fostering Christian democracy in the sense of Catholic participation in the democratic political process, Sturzo started in 1905 to articulate his views on the need for—and characteristics of—a new political party. It was needed to enable the Catholic majority to contribute effectively to the common good. Without a new party, Catholics would have to choose between the socialists on the left—who wanted to collectivize property—and a political right that largely supported the status quo through their economic liberalism.
The characteristics of such a party included the following. First, it should build upon the experience of Christian democratic participation in the political processes for the common good, but it should avoid that name, partially because of the baggage it had gathered among some Catholics. Second, it must be a modern and secular party, meaning it must not be under clerical control. This was a path to moving beyond the failed non expedit policy. Third, it must be national and not merely local so it could effect policy broadly. Fourth, it must be “on the progressive side of the political spectrum” (257) so it could work for the needed reforms and not simply support a status quo in which the wealthy dominated. Fifth, it would strictly limit itself to questions of civil reform and leave properly ecclesial matters to the hierarchy.
Finally, in the wake of the First World War, Sturzo was able to form the Italian People’s Party (PPI) in 1919 and served as its secretary until 1923. The PPI—which published a weekly newspaper called Il Popolo Nuovo—quickly became a major force in Italian politics, with socialists to the left and the fascists rising on the right. Sturzo tried to form a coalition between his People’s Party and the Socialists to keep the fascists out of power. This alliance, however, “was deemed unacceptable within the Vatican,”8 which was still deeply under the influence of anti-modernists like the previously discussed Louis Billot SJ, who opposed liberal democracy as a form of modernism. Vatican officials, therefore, “kept Fr. Sturzo’s PPI at arm’s length and eventually decided it was better to negotiate directly with Mussolini after he seized power in 1922.”9
Mussolini shrewdly undermined Sturzo and the PPI. After his March on Rome in October of 1922, he was able to win the support of the PPI—against Sturzo’s advice—by offering the two important ministries of Treasury and Labor and Social Security. Mussolini also lobbied the Vatican that the hostile PPI under Sturzo’s influence would be an obstacle to resolving the crucial “Roman question” which concerned the future Vatican City State and compensation for the Papal States. At the 1923 Congress of the PPI, Sturzo was able to foster consensus on the thesis of the incompatibility between the PPI and fascism. This led to harsh attacks by Mussolini against Sturzo, which led to the loss of his support by the Vatican, to his resignation as secretary, and to the cooption of the PPI by fascists. Sturzo was forced into exile in 1924 amidst fascist pressures, physical threats, and following consultation with the Holy See.
His clearheaded opposition to fascism, and his concern to address the social inequities that had drawn so many to socialism, will be characteristic of the broader tradition of social Catholicism.
Long Exile and Ongoing Political Engagement
Fr. Sturzo’s long exile from his beloved Italy started in London in 1924 and included time in Paris. The exile continued in the United States from 1940 until August of 1946. “After the signing of the Lateran Treaty in 1929, he was offered an appointment as a Canon of Saint Peter's Basilica in Rome again in exchange for his permanent renunciation of politics.”10 He declined this offer, however, as he had a similar one in 1926. In the United States, he was assigned to serve as a chaplain at a facility in Florida for elderly and infirmed priests.
Sturzo’s expertise on Italian matters was tapped beginning in 1941, when “he cooperated with agents from the British Security Co-Ordination, as well as the Office of Strategic Services and the Office of War Information, providing them with his assessments of the political forces with the Italian resistance movement and radio broadcasts to the Italian peninsula.11 He moved to Brooklyn in April 1944 in the hope of eventually returning to his homeland. His efforts to do so were initially vetoed by both the Vatican and Alcide De Gasperi in October 1945 and May 1946. His return was allowed that August after both the defeat of fascism and the Italian referendum in favor of a republic over a monarchy largely vindicated his general orientation regarding the political form that the Church should support.
The Legacy of Don Luigi Sturzo as Social Catholic
Don Luigi Sturzo’s social Catholicism depended on his formation in a family that included multiple religious vocations. It grew out of his experience of personal suffering, which was reflected in his lifelong concern for the suffering of others, and to his tireless action on their behalf. He recognized, along with the modern Catholic social tradition, that effective intervention into social injustices takes place especially through the political process within constitutional and democratic states. He endured an exile from his homeland of over twelve years rather than renounce his social apostolate, which compelled him to speak out against Catholic collaboration with fascists and for our participation in constitutional democracy.
Sturzo’s pragmatic collaboration in pursuit of shared goals, despite profound differences on deeply held convictions, reflects another common characteristic of social Catholics, as we saw in Maurice Blondel’s defense of working with anti-clerical Republicans during the Third French Republic.
As an exemplar of social Catholicism, Fr. Sturzo also took it for granted that effective work for the common good must be built on sound intellectual foundations.12 As previously summarized, his graduate studies and his subsequent teaching experience provided a solid foundation for ongoing intellectual engagement on social and political questions. After he was finally allowed to return to Italy in August of 1946, and settled outside of Rome. He founded the Luigi Sturzo Institute in 1951, to foster understanding of not only past experiences but also present challenges.13 In 1952, he was made a member of the Senate of the Republic and in 1953 was honored as a Senator for Life, for which he was granted a dispensation from Pope Pius XII.
Pope John Paul II opened the cause for his beatification in 2002 after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints named him eligible as a Servant of God. For those located in Italy, a three-part miniseries on his life and work was completed in 1981 and is available for online streaming.
In relation to previous figures treated in posts to this substack, Sturzo can be understood a younger Italian contemporary of the American social reformer Msgr. John A. Ryan. Readers may recall that Ryan cast his first vote in 1892 for the short lived People’s Party (especially 1892-96)—perhaps better known as the Populist Party—that had formed to represent the interests of American farmers and industrial workers during the so-called Gilded Age. Over two decades later, when John Ryan was supporting what were increasingly called “progressive” social reforms in the United States, Sturzo helped to found the Italian People’s Party (PPI) in 1919. His work should be understood as part of the broader response by social Catholics to the call of Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 social encyclical Rerum novarum: On Capital and Labor to defend the human dignity of the working classes, among whom the socialists had made significant inroads as Catholics only slowly awakened to the emerging social situation.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Sturzo, translated by google.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Sturzo, translated by google.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Luigi-Sturzo.
Paul Misner, Social Catholicism in Europe: From the Onset of Industrialization to the First World War (New York: Crossroad, 1991), chapter 13. All references with parenthetical page numbers are to this work.
https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Sturzo, translated by google.
As I discussed in my previous post, Pius X did this after the younger Christian Democrats had come to dominate it, which bumped up against the non expedit policy that denied the legitimacy of the Italian state, and thus Catholic participation in it.
John McGreevy, Catholicism: A Global History from the French Revolution to Pope Francis (Norton: New York, 2023), 180.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Sturzo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luigi_Sturzo
We have seen this intellectual dimension of social Catholicism in Bishop Ketteler, and in the Fribourg Union and other European study circles that followed in his wake. We previously saw it in the French study weeks, and recently saw it in the “Catholic Union for Social Studies” founded by Toniolo and Albani.
This institute was founded to support study of the social sciences to prepare social and political leaders to serve the common good. One the on hand, it continues to provide resources—library and archive—to understand the twentieth century. On the other hand, “through debates, reflections, insights and publications, it analyses and interprets the main transformations and current challenges of our society also in an international perspective, providing ideas and proposals for the development of a democracy that responds to the needs of citizens.” Citation from google translation of https://sturzo.it/istituto/.