| «In particular, in the Pastoral Letter of 20 January 1921 on Catholic Action he affirmed that “we (…) can do nothing more acceptable to God than to assist those in need (…). After the holy tabernacle in which he dwells, Jesus Christ is nowhere else present than in those who suffer ”3. His appeals to the social action of Catholics were insistent, in the awareness that the way for the promotion of the popular masses also passed through politics and not only through charitable action. The strong solicitation of believers for social commitment stemmed from the same underlying concern. (…) The bishop's line emerges clearly from the pastoral letter of February 15, 1919 on "Catholic action and social action", published the day after the foundation of the Popular Party by Luigi Sturzo. Convinced of the need for "the spirit and kingdom of Jesus Christ to be re-established in the family and in our civil society", Conforti exhorted the clergy and the faithful laity to "take an active part in Catholic social action" in order to "procure the good economy of the humble and the weak in the exercise of justice and Christian charity”: a social action, therefore, essentially aimed at “going to the aid of the people”, that people whose fate Conforti intended to fully share. But precisely the constitution of the Popular Party was greeted by Bishop Conforti also as a moment of clarification of the political and social commitment of Catholics: what had been for a long time, inevitably, an undifferentiated social action could now be better defined in the two different ambits of the social and charitable work (a task that continued to be entrusted to the Church as a community and to lay Catholics as believers) and, more properly, to politics. “I draw your attention – the bishop wrote among other things – to an important fact which has induced a considerable modification in the Catholic movement, limiting the sphere of its activity. And, as you well understood, I intend to allude to the establishment of the Italian People's Party, in which everyone can participate and which led to the detachment from the Catholic Electoral Union from the bundle of other Unions. From now on, these will have to remain an exclusively religious and moral task, desired by the Holy See for the Christian restoration of the people, while an exclusively political action is reserved for the former, completely independent of Catholic action... They therefore remain for the future the fields and responsibilities of one and the other entity having different purposes are clearly defined”.
Thus, if there was no lack of open encouragement to the newborn Christian-inspired party, the distinction between religious action and political action was clear and sharp, in a relationship that in the following years would not be simple or easy, but which helped to make the Parma Catholics the necessary leap in quality from a generic social commitment to a clearer distinction between Catholic action and political action. In this sense, Conforti's teaching confirmed his basic attention to the problems of the city, but with the constant concern not to compromise the Church in party affairs. (…) La “religious choice” that the Catholic world, little by little and not without difficulty, would accomplish in the years of the Second Vatican Council, had been anticipated by a pastoral action such as that of Conforti who, without indulging in abstract spiritualisms, had always been characterized by the conviction that The Church's mission was to proclaim the Gospel and not claim anti-historical hegemony over the city. The great horizons of the Church's universal mission thus contributed, in Conforti's mind, to exorcising every neotemporal temptation». From: Giorgio Campanini, Monsignor Conforti and his city, pp. 223-227. |
“The greatest gift you can give
to the Church and to the world is holiness".