Domenico Delrio in a press briefing. 150 journalists were accredited at the event, including foreign newspapers.
On the anniversary of Don Sturzo’s appeal to the “free and strong” (18 January 1919) which effectively put an end to Pius IX’s “non expedit” (the ban on politics for believers), democratic Catholics come out into the open with an event that went to the of beyond the best forecasts. The organizers, starting with the leader Graziano Delrio, expected a maximum of five hundred people to arrive at Palazzo Lombardia in Milan, entry was by invitation, but more than double that number arrived. There is a desire for politics among believers in the PD area, who until now have been politely kept in the corner by Elly Schlein’s secretary. The leitmotif of all the interventions was precisely this: the end of aphasia. “We lived through a period in which it seemed that politics no longer needed us”, recalls Fabio Pizzul, one of the leading exponents of the democratic Catholics within the party, “but then…”. Then came the social week of the Catholics of Trieste, which showed a lively and passionate world. The Catholics were like wanderers scattered in the darkness who recognized each other because the Julian city finally turned on the light.
The one in Milan is the natural continuation of that event. Various scattered initiatives have emerged and now we want to connect them, network them, creating a strong and dynamic movement, in a panorama in which politics does not emerge from the ordinary, from politicizing politics. First point, recalls the vice president of the School of Civil Economy Elena Granata: end of “pre-politics”. For years, perhaps for decades, that old stuff was very fashionable, it was the recurrent (and reassuring) rhetoric when talking about the role of Catholics in politics: stopping at the “pre-political”, spreading and affirming the values of the social doctrine of the Church, dedicate yourself to volunteering in the Third Sector, possibly without ever declaring yourself in case you become involved in politics. A refrain that ended up making Catholics irrelevant, especially appreciated by those who were not Catholic and who meanwhile occupied the seats. The economist Leonardo Becchetti turns it cultural by using the motto of the French Revolution: «Liberal thought has taken the word freedom, socialism the term equality while fraternity, dear to Catholics, has remained in the sacristy». Today fraternity, which means solidarity, networks, bonds, collaboration and which Pizzul and Becchetti call “relational intelligence” must be relaunched. One of the indirect results of the stop at the “pre-political” is that politics has become radicalized to the right or to the left, or here or there, there is no room for the center, for the moderate solutions which are usually the essence of mediation. Woe betide anyone talking about the centre, it’s like talking about the Bermuda Triangle: there the votes (and the leaders) disappear.
For former senator Stefano Lepri, father of the single allowance (“one of the many examples of how our determination has achieved the objective”), the meeting “is intended to be an opportunity for in-depth analysis and discussion between us. We have no predestined goals and objectives. Rather, if we want, it will be the beginning of a new path”. A way to revive and update the political culture of popularism. There is a second objective, Lepri reveals: «to give continuity and strengthen the networks of administrators, politicians, associations, passionate people interested in the common good who find themselves in this political culture».
The second fixed point is that another party must not be founded, the Catholic party. Pier Luigi Castagnetti, noble father of the Democratic Party (the other is Romano Prodi, who thinks the same way), categorically excludes him, like all those who attended, including Ernesto Maria Ruffini, the former director of the Revenue Agency who resigned in controversy with the League, heir to a dynasty that intertwines Church and politics (father minister, great uncle cardinal, brother head of communications of the Holy Sede) to whom the meeting dedicated one of the three key speeches (together with Castagnetti and Prodi), considered by many to be the federation of the great Catholic political centre. Indeed, for Ruffini «the party and the Catholic can be considered in contradiction with each other. One defines the part, the other universality” (but if we need to overcome the pre-political, then how do we do it?).
His speech was eagerly awaited. It was not an investiture speech, but certainly a contribution to the renewed political action of Catholics. Ruffini, listing a series of no’s, first denied wanting to found a new DC and wanting to lead any movement, not even a current. But he appealed to the plurality of the political debate, to the antagonism with the right of Salvini and Meloni (“if you win with the right it’s the right that wins”), to the conquest of voters not only in the enormous pool of abstentions (today 6 out of 10 Italians do not vote) but also among the other parties, including the League. As? With “a broad, shared vision, which is the only one that can bring people back to the vote.” Then he listed, as Prodi did, the main issues that are dear to democratic Catholics, from work to the environment, from housing to family policies. Throughout the day, not a single word was said about individual rights (for example ethical issues related to the end of life, surrogate motherhood, abortion or the LGBTQ* world, but not only) so dear to Schlein. There was talk, yes, this is the priority, of collective rights: work, young people, the hardship of adolescents, the home, the family, Europe, the demographic crisis, peace, progress at the service of man , volunteering, the third sector. Today’s politics is too “presentified”, too linked to the contingent and instead any serious political project, explains Castagnetti, is linked to the future.
For Romano Prodi, the country’s industrial policy is a total disaster. And so, in connection from Fabriano, the paper district in the grip of a structural and dramatic crisis, the former president of IRI, former prime minister and former president of European Commission, the founder of the Ulivo and the number one card of the Democratic Party lists once again the themes that would make the country and Europe grow, starting with an orderly, legal and humane management of immigration and a European army, so as to compete with the global powers that undermine our well-being and plunge many people into the spiral of crisis.
No allusion to the center understood geometrically as a place in which to position oneself politically nor to a current within the Democratic Party. Even if the calls to the popular party are strong. In the Pantheon of the democratic community there are Sturzo, De Gasperi, Pope Francis, Mattarella, David Sassoli, Stefano Zamagni but also Rosario Livatino. The blessed was remembered by Ruffini for a phrase: “at the end of our days the question that will be asked of us is not whether we were believers, but whether we were credible”.
So what? How can we explain this renewed desire to engage in politics with its values that have their roots in the Gospel? Montale’s verses come to mind: “this is the only thing we can tell you today: what we are not is what we do not want”. We are not right-wing, we are not for the sovereignists who attack Europe, we are not for the Nazi movements supported by Tycoons like Musk or Zuckemberg, we are not for a new party. But we have many projects and we want to bring them back to the attention of the political debate. The assizes of Milan, combined with those of Orvieto and Brescia, were a concrete signal: Catholics want to count in politics.
