Italian
Catholics in the long ’68 in Veneto
This is the title of a monographic issue of Venetica, the journal of contemporary history founded in 1984 as a journal of the history of the Veneto region in contemporary times – biannual, then annual, and then back to biannual – “Venetica” has now reached forty years of existence. Since 1998, it has been the journal of the Institutes for the History of the Resistance of Belluno, Treviso, Venice, Verona, and Vicenza, and since 2001 it has benefited from the support of the Veneto Cgil.
But it is also the title of a conference that took place on the afternoon of December 4 at the CGIL auditorium in Treviso, changing the subtitle to “Catholics of dissent in the long ’68 of Treviso” to make the theme more specific. The person who strongly wanted this event was Alfiero Boschiero, who edited the volume with Liviana Gazzetta.
Alfiero Boschiero, a trade unionist of the Cgil, was the general secretary of the Mirano-Dolo district from 1978 to 1981 and in the 1980s a member of the regional secretariat of metalworkers and the confederation. President of Auser Veneto in the early 2000s, from 2004 to 2017 he was the director of Ires Veneto.
Liviana Gazzetta is a PhD and a teacher in secondary education. After studying the history of the first women’s political movement in Italy, she focused on the history of the Catholic women’s movement, publishing various contributions. As part of her PhD in European social history at Ca’ Foscari University, she conducted research on the women’s Catholic action in the Veneto region during fascism. She is one of the founders of the Gualberta Beccari Historical Archive in Padua and a member of SIS (Society of Women Historians).
The conference was designed to reflect on the epochal change that has overwhelmed Catholic Veneto and its values with the Sixty-Eight and how the Catholic part of the population and the Church reacted to this tsunami.
The first intervention was entrusted to Professor Enzo Pace, a sociologist of religion at the University of Padua. President of the International Society for the Sociology of Religion, he has been a visiting professor at the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Its introduction aimed to highlight who the subjects were that contributed to the change: women, individuals from local realities, who gave rise to a new Catholic imagination. It is important to understand what happened in those years in Veneto: the end of a world and probably the final stretch of an ecclesiastical model. While in the south religiosity was and is fundamentally expressed around shrines, here in the north we can speak of parish civilization, where the parish priest was not only concerned with the care of souls.
Jumping to the present, Professor Pace showcased two examples of how religious practices have had to contend with the digital age: the Nano Chapel in Posnam, where one can attend mass from their mobile phone, or online confession in Lucerne, even with a (virtual) Jesus. Another frontier is that of Digital Immortality, meaning the possibility of creating an avatar that, after our passing, can interact with our loved ones, drawing from the digital traces we have left in our earthly life.
Finally, he spoke about the indicators of the decline of the Catholic Church. First of all, the staggering drop in vocations, which leads to the difficulty of maintaining the actual number of priests to manage the parishes. We are indeed reaching the incredible situation of a pastor who has to take care of up to 7 parish communities.
He then continued his speech highlighting how these necessary organizational changes hinder the creation of communities of meaning, what parishes used to be.
The economic and sociological change from the Sixties to today has been so rapid that it is no longer possible to think of a priest trained in a seminary and in obedience.
There is indeed today a form of religious life that is based on individual choices and not on tradition, which was the consequence of the wave of innovation from the Second Vatican Council. But the fear of the grassroots movement has been paralyzing. The two popes who succeeded Pope John XXIII have tried to maintain a balance between tradition and innovation.
And what role did the bishops play during that period? They were fearful in their positions, to the extent that the consequence of their attitude was that in a church where tradition persists, individual conscience becomes decisive. The concordat between State and Church in 1984 represented another watershed.
Then the comparison with other European companies could be inspiring.
The second intervention was by Isabella Gianelloni, a historian and high school teacher.
Her reflections on the essay that was the subject of the conference focused on three terms: woman, secular, and historical. She therefore made a historical excursus, starting from the Council of Trent (1545-1563) where, in response to precise rules aimed at curbing the spread of the Protestant Reformation, secular society produced scientists like Copernicus.
So within the Church there was, on one hand, the index of prohibited books, while on the other, there were those questioning these scientific discoveries. Because the Church has never been a monolith and within it there are different, sometimes opposing positions. With a leap of three centuries, she remembers her childhood as the daughter of a teacher who worked with working priests. With Rerum Novarum, the Church had become aware that a monumental change was underway and it was necessary to somehow manage the shift in mentality. Because the Church and power always try to keep up with new developments.
In particular, there was the issue of patriarchal power, which the Church itself exercised through the moral rules it helped to impose in rural societies. In the aftermath of World War II, the communists themselves did not want women to be granted the vote because they were too influenced by the Church.
In the white and agricultural Veneto, the end of sharecropping arrives and industrial presence begins, where once again the priests become decisive, as they are the ones who recommend those who want to enter the factory. But with the new figure of the Metal Mezzadro, the habits of the population change. And it is precisely in this context that the figures of the worker priests emerge.
As for women, a new way of experiencing sexuality will be the springboard for emancipation: the divorce referendum of 1974 and the abortion referendum of 1981 will confront society with decisive moral choices. And in the parish? Women participate, but certain roles are still closed to them.
So history continues to question itself.
The third intervention was by Don Paolo Magoga, President of the Fondazione Opera Montegrappa and Director of the Centro di Spiritualità e Cultura “Don Paolo Chiavacci”, who wanted to explain how the Church has concretely addressed the problem of poverty and the depopulation of rural areas by establishing vocational schools, initially in the spaces of the rectory and which have now expanded to host over 600 students. The idea was born in 1954 from a priest, Don Erasmo, who, noticing the situation of forced emigration, where emigrants suffered hardships and humiliations, thought of finding funding to create a vocational school where teachers would support students in their paths, taking care of them, “smelling the scent of the sheep,” as Pope Francis used to say.
Another aspect he addressed was that of dissent within the seminar in the Sixties, to the point that for a certain period he was forced to close due to the unruliness of his students, only to reopen with a new assembly-style and democratic approach, in which he sought to reconcile obedience with dialogue.
Two young people, Filippo and Matilde, then participated in the conference; the former is completing his three-year program, while the latter is finishing her master’s degree. Both asked the speakers questions about their presentations.
Then a worker priest, Don Pietro Zaco, intervened, sharing his experience, where among the banned books that circulated secretly in the seminary discussing the French May of ’68 and the contents of the Council that were conveyed through the teachers, he completed his seminary training in 1973. But one question lingered in his mind: who is man? So he went to seek it in the factories, working alongside them, becoming a worker priest. He worked for 10 years in a factory alongside two other priests. For health reasons, he had to suspend this experience.
But the question has remained within him: who is the man? So he went to work in the prison, where he has been a chaplain for thirty years, where he found a school of life that fills his existence with meaning.
Subsequently, there was an intervention by a university professor from Padua, Giorgio Franceschetti, who illustrated the projections of priests both abroad (by 2048 there will be no French priests left!) and in Italy. He cited the diocese of Padua, which will have 185 priests in 2048, down from the current 434.
Another intervention was by Alessandro Pierobon, President of the Acli of the province of Treviso. This association was founded at the behest of Pope Pius XII to counterbalance the socialist component. However, a part of the members, with the end of collateralism and the closeness to the Christian democratic idea, distanced themselves from the association. After the deaths of Moro and Berlinguer, the process came to a halt because the world moved in another direction.
The speaker then added a series of iconic dates to understand the transformations that have occurred in the world of work: in 1965 the first wage tables; in 1966 the law regulating individual dismissals; in 1970 the Workers’ Statute; in 1975 the Family Law.
As can be seen, this conference provided an overview of this topic, which is little known and rarely attended by scholars, but as has been noted, it will have repercussions on our future. Therefore, we thank ISTRESCO once again for guiding us through the less traveled paths of knowledge that are necessary to cultivate our critical thinking.
