“The greatest gift you can give
to the Church and to the world is holiness".
| At the advent of the fascist dictatorship, the diocese of Parma was governed by Guido Maria Conforti, born in Casalora di Ravadese on 30 March 1865, who, after being ordained a priest in 1888, had developed growing attention towards the missions, which had materialized with the foundation in 1895 of the Emilian Seminary for foreign missions, the initial germ of the Xaverian missionaries. After having been vicar general of the diocese from 1896 to 1902, the priest from Parma was designated archbishop of Ravenna, where he remained until 1904, when he resigned for health reasons. (…) In the wake of the appeal, the initiatives multiplied: to recall just two examples, the diocesan assembly of the CA in 1935 had a fervent intonation for the victory in Ethiopia; from this point of view, a propitiatory function was then promoted for the Italian armies which were advancing to bring «great fruits of goodness to those still barbarous lands», under the banner «of the tricolor, sign of victory and of Latin civilization» (22). Nonetheless, the Spanish civil war was experienced as a clash of civilizations, which had the permanence of Christianity at stake: therefore, in the shadow of this conception, there was no shortage of invitations to the faithful to join the corps sent by Mussolini as volunteers in support of Franco's militia.
These convergences underwent a moment of critical verification following the promulgation of the racial laws in 1938. The "turning point" of the regime led Colli to ask for "clarity" on the nature of the racist doctrine, which had to be clarified, specifying whether it contained "a scope only biological or even philosophical, contingent or absolute, materialistic or even spiritual. The prelate asked publicly even if, basically, the "truths of faith relating to the common descent of the first man created by God, to the common Redemption wrought by Jesus Christ, to the common eternal supernatural destiny" were accepted. (…) In: Paolo Trionfini, Church of Parma in the long journey through the fascist dictatorship 1926-1945. |