Pope John Paul II ... and Italy

...Despite their loss of worldly power, however, the Italian popes continued to exert considerable influence on the politics and social customs of the Italian state...

...John Paul II, who has been a regular visitor to Rome but who has never mixed with Italian politics, has already made his position clear: the political affairs of a country should be the responsibility of each nation's episcopal conference, interferences should only occur in matters of conscience and Concordats are needed only when the liberty of the church is in danger, What will be the effect of a Polish pope on Italian politics...

...When in 1925 Mussolini shocked the nation by openly admitting responsibility for the assassination of a Socialist deputy, Giacomo Mattebtti, negotiations began between Catholics and Socialists interested in forming a coalition that could bring down the Fascist leader...

...In 1874, for example, Pius IX who had presided over the papal defeat of 1870 forbade Italian Catholics to participate in the Parliamentary elections of the recently formed Italian kingdom although voting was allowed at the local level...

...His personal secretary during those years was Giulio Andreotti, now the Christian Democratic prime minister...

...Wojtyla is considered a moderate, a man of dialogue and one of those responsible for the relatively good relations that now exist between the Polish Catholic Church and the Polish socialist state...

...Pius XI, who openly supported the Fascists, ordered Sturzo, however, to withdraw from politics and asked for the dissolution of the Catholic party...

...In 1929 the Lateran Pact, engineered by Mussolini to gain support for his regime, was heralded as the answer to the "Roman question," the problem of church-state relations in Italy which had been left unresolved since the Italian conquest of Rome...

...The Catholic party finally has the obligation to act like an adult and speak for itself...

...Peter's throne...

...commented Eugenio Scalfari, editor-in-chief of La Repubblica, left-leaning daily known for its lay outlook;' 'any reference beyond the Tiber has lost its significance...

...Although the Lateran Treaty did finally settle the territorial dispute by ceding Vatican City to the pope, the accompanying Concordat destroyed any idea of church-state separation...

...The election of a non-Italian pope also creates a delicate situation for the Italian Communist Party...

...The presence of an Italian pope made such a lack of separation all the more evident...

...After decades of papal involvement in Italian affairs, the election of a pope who—at last—comes from "a far away country" is bound to have a profound effect on Italian political life...

...Peter, but became the temporal ruler of a powerful state in what is now central Italy as well...

...Now the Communist Party must deal directly with the Italian Episcopal Conference which in the past has not shown itself as open to dialogue as the bishops of Rome have been...

...Many top Christian Democrats had—and have—close ties with the Vatican...

...Some have argued that the election of the first pope coming from a socialist Eastern European country could prove to be a political liability for the Italian Communists...

...In 1922 Mussolini came to power with the support of the Italian Popular Party, the Catholic party ^hat had been founded in 1919 by a Sicilian priest, Don Luigi Sturzo...

...This ban—called "non expedit" after the first line of the papal declaration—was continued by Pius IX's successor, Leo XIII (1878-1903...

...After World War II, the influence of the "government across the Tiber'' headed by an Italian pontiff continued to be felt in the Italian republic...

...These political ties were, of course, intricately linked to the presence of an Italian pope...

...The presence of a pope from a country where religious liberty has suffered in the hands of a Communist regime may be, however, a source of embarrassment for the Italian Communist Party which has taken such pains to appear pluralistic...

...A non-Italian should be more objective about such sticky problems as the Italian clergy's involvement in political elections, church marriages, religious education in state schools and church fiscal affairs in Italy...

...Pius XII, for example, forbade the Italian state television to show ballerinas in their traditional tutus: they were forced to wear more modest bloomers...

...Rome has become the chaotic capital of the world's 8th largest industrial power and the popes have lost their temporal kingdom to the invading Italian troops at Porta Pia...

...The most drastic papal interference in Italian politics—and the most damaging for Italian democracy—came during the reign of Pius XI (1922-1939...

...MARGO HAMMOND (Margo Hammond, a frequent contributor, is an American journalist based in Rome...

...Amintore Fanfani, the Christian Democratic president of the Senate, was a close friend of Pius XII...

...The new pope has had, after all, first-hand experience in dealing with church-state problems...

...The Christian Democrats, so long supported by the Vatican, must adjust to a pope who will no longer have any reason to take sides directly in Italian politics...

...After the disastrous defeat of the Vatican-led campaign against the Italian divorce law in 1974, for example, he opposed launching a similar campaign to try to repeal the recently passed abortion law...

...The last non-Italian pope dates back to January 9, 1522 when a Dutch cardinal sat on St...

...The Communists realize, though, that they can't have their cake and eat it too...

...Sometimes the interferences were relatively harmless and almost comical...

...The election of Karol Cardinal Wojtyla of Krakow, the first non-Italian pope in the last four and a half centuries, has been hailed as a sign of the church's universality...

...Many Italians are hoping that the election of a Polish pontiff will also mark the end of centuries of papal interference in strictly Italian affairs...

...In 1913 a secret pact was signed by the Catholic Electoral Union (headed by Count Gentiloni after whom the pact was named) and candidates of the conservative Liberal Party...

...In 1904 the threat of a Socialist victory in Italian Parliamentary elections convinced Pius X to lift the ban and openly encourage Italian Catholics to support conservative candidates...

...An Italian Catholi'c writer, Gianni Baget Bozzo, has summed up the situation well: ' 'The Christian Democrats risk becoming orphans, the Communist party may lose its most important interlocutor in the church and Italy may become the widow of the Concordat...

...L'Unita, the Communist party organ, was rather enthusiastic about the election results: Wojtyla's election, explained a front-page editorial comment the day after the Conclave closed, indicates that the conservative line of such ' 'papabili'' as Cardinal Siri was defeated and that a candidate interested in continuing the Council reform won out...

...When Hadrian VI of Utrecht was elected, the Sistine Chapel had not yet been built, Rome was a small provincial town and the pope not only inherited the spiritual title of successor of St...

...The Sicilian priest obeyed and by 1926 when Mussolini took over full dictatorial powers the Catholic party had been totally dismantled and did not—unlike the other political parties—form a clandestine opposition...

...By 1924, however, the Catholic party—distressed by the growing violence of the Fascist squads—pulled out of the Fascist-led government...

...The Christian Democrats must hurry up and become a lay party...

...While the election of a "foreign" pope may be causing some anxious moments for Italy's two major parties, it should ease the on-going negotiations about the updating of the Concordat...

...As before, however, the papal influence was often decisive in swaying elections (the Christian Democratic landslide in 1948 was greatly aided by the Vatican's threat to excommunicate those who voted Socialist or Communist) or in maintaining Catholic social values (divorce in Italy was not possible until 1970, the sale of contraceptives on the peninsula was impeded by the publication of Paul VI's encyclical Humanae Vitae which expressly condemned their use and an abortion law was passed only this year...

...Aldo Moro, the Christian Democratic president and ex-prime minister who was assassinated by the Red Brigades, was a close friend of Paul VI...

...He also accepted the necessity of allowing the Communists into the governmental majority while the Italian Episcopal Conference remained opposed to it...

...Since the death of Pius XII, a staunch anti-Communist, the Italian popes with their policy of Ostpolitik had been stressing the need for dialogue with the Marxists...

...After the war, the Vatican openly supported the Christian Democratic Party, the new Catholic party that had emerged toward the end of the war to replace the dismantled Italian Commonweal: 752 Popular Party...

...One cannot be glad that the new pontiff is no lbnger tied to Italian traditions and customs and then comp24 November 1978: 753 lain that the Italian bishops have now more weight and more autonomy as a result," declared Communist leader Gian Carlo Pajetta...

...Pope John XXIII was considered the pope of the " centra sinistra" or center-left government and even Paul VI, who himself was a political conservative, took a realistic position in dealing with the left...

...Alcide de Gasperi, political secretary of the Christian Democrats and long-time prime minister until his death in 1954, took refuge and worked as a librarian in the Vatican during Fascism...

...Since the election of the Dutch pope, there have been 45 popes (all Italian...

...In exchange for Catholic support, the Liberals promised not to push for a divorce law and not to reduce Catholic influence in public schools...