They were on the front lines fighting for freedom. And then to work for the reconstruction of Italy and the birth of the Republic. Catholic men and women in our country have made a significant contribution to the fight against Nazi-fascism and for the development of democratic life.
«Even if in public opinion the Resistance is more linked to the image of the communist partisan», explains Professor Mario Taccolini, former director of the Department of Historical and Philological Sciences of the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart and of the Historical Archive of the Brescian resistance and the contemporary age, «in reality the Catholic component was not a minority at all. Indeed, the different souls of the resistance were complementary, they interpenetrated and completed each other and the contribution of the Catholics was fundamental.” «The Catholic resistance», adds Professor Taccolini, «has some original features, as can be seen from the figures of many priests who were involved in those years».
There are well-known and lesser-known names leafing through the large green albums preserved in the Brescia Archive, one of the most important and documented among the Italian institutes dealing with those years. The faces of boys and girls who gave their best years – often dying – to the partisan struggle flow between the pages. There is Don Giovanni Battista Picelli, of the G. Cappellini Valcamonica brigade, killed on 20 May 1944; there is Achilla Maria Morandini, of the F. Lorenzini Brigade, killed on 10 October 1944; there is Romolo Ragnoli, commander of the “Tito Speri” division of the Green Flames, there is the gold medalist Luigi Ercoli, leader of the first groups of the Camunian Resistance, arrested on 30 September 1944 and died in the Melk concentration camp on 15 January 1945.
In the partisan struggle many priests stand out, “priests all in one piece”, underlines Taccolini, “like Don Giacomo Vender, who immediately joined the first groups of partisans and then joined the National Liberation Committeeor how father Carlo Manziana, great friend of Giovan Battista Montini, detained in Dachau”. Or like the Filipino father Luigi Rinaldini, one of the most committed of the fathers of peace, to name just a few.
The numbers already speak for themselves. Enrico Mattei, partisan leader and then president of Eni, at the first congress of the Christian Democrats in April 1946 he indicated 65 thousand – later reaching 80 thousand in the final phase of the Resistance – the Catholics who divided into 180 brigades actively participated in the Resistance, out of a total of 130 thousand peoplewhich became 200 thousand around April 25th. «People’s Brigades», «Green Flames», «Freedom Volunteers», «White Teams»were the names with which, throughout the Centre-North, the groups that referred, often directly, to the Gospel were distinguished. Not to mention the Catholics who in many areas, such as Liguria and Romagna, were also conspicuously present in the communist-inspired Garibaldi Brigades.
But it wasn’t just a matter of numbers. In the northern panorama, where the names of Gino Pistoni, Tina Anselmi, Mattei himself, Teresio Olivelli, Benigno Zaccagnini, Paolo Emilio Taviani, Giuseppe Dossetti, Sergio Cotta, Mariano Rumor, Ermanno Gorrieri, Giovanni Marcora, stand out. there is a whole series of priests, “weekday” Catholics who become a point of reference for liberation.
Brescia, in particular, stands out for its peculiarities. «Not only for the historical event between the two wars, but in the years following the Second World War, in the difficult years of reconstruction and preceding the Second Vatican Council”, explains Taccolini, “the fundamental work of the clergy was confirmed. Priests have a very evident coherence on a personal level which makes them recognized and authoritative teachers and referents. They are cultured priests, who read despite having days full of commitment and dedication alongside young people in oratories and parishes. During the years of the Resistance, the choice of these priests – who also operationally became real guides – was inspired by an irrepressible civil passion. They were educators and masters and they perceive it as coherent and consequential to their commitment as priest-educators, that of climbing the mountains and alongside the young people who fight.”
In September 1944, in a pamphlet that also ended up on Mussolini’s table, Don Giacomo Vender wrote: «If we do not want to resign ourselves to perishing or having our lives begged, the mobilization of spirits and of every virtue and civil force is urgently needed. Let it be known that everyone contributes: either with their own weight of selfishness, sloth, cowardice, absenteeism and servility, to prolong the anguish, to fuel mourning and rubble, and to extend the incineration of the Nation: or with intelligence and magnanimity to the point of sacrifice, rush to close or complete the ranks in the face of demonic German and fascist desperation, to quickly extinguish the destructive blazes, to save from Teutonic fury and virulent fascist putrefaction what is still left of freedom and the human spirit”.
Author, with Father Rinaldini and with Don Giuseppe Almici, of Manifesto of the Catholic resistance, Don Vender also questions the choice of non-violence. A theme that arises strongly for believers faced with the call to Resistance. «The response of Catholics», explains Professor Taccolini, «can be summarized in that very happy image of Teresio Olivelli, “the rebels for love”Meaning what people who oppose Nazi-fascism, and the ideology that characterizes Nazi-fascism, in the name of fidelity to the Gospel for which they cannot help but fight against an ideology that has tragic effects”.
The articles that Olivelli, who died in the Hersbruck concentration camp on 17 January 1945, published in the movement’s newspaper claimed the rebellion as an instrument of political, social and spiritual liberation.
Editorial production, with magazines and books, is of fundamental importance. From this point of view, Brescia has a very particular connotation: «First of all», underlines Taccolini, «the birth of the Morcelliana publishing house should be remembered in the 1930s. Brescia is the vital and dynamic place of a Catholic intellectuality which expresses its opposition to Nazi-fascist ideology through study, the cultivation of intelligence and conscience. With this spirit he undertakes a whole series of editorial paths.” This approach rests on ground that has already been prepared some time ago. «It sinks in the 1870s and 1880s», explains Taccolini «When, following the unification of Italy, Pius IX with the “non expedit” first exhorts not to participate and then prohibits political militancy, the Catholics of Brescia invented the formula of “preparation in abstention”. This is how they justify their great commitment in those years and throw themselves headlong into social activities which are 90 percent Catholic.”
When the “non expedit” ceases and an alliance between Catholics and moderate liberals emerges, «e a political conscience also gradually matures which then finds correspondence in Sturzo’s famous proclamation to the free and strong, the soil is well fertilized and favorable to commitment. The original trait is that of a true organized movement, of an adult Catholicism, with a culture and a strategy. The years of resistance then become a real forge, the political, cultural and ecclesial laboratory of this social Catholicism.”
It is therefore not surprising that in this context Bishop Giacinto Tredici mandates the father of peace Luigi Rinaldini to accompany the young people and students as the only chaplain of the green flames in the mountains, while the rectory of Don Carlo Comensoli, a Camunian priest, becomes the epicenter of the strategic action of the Green Flames and of the resistance in Val Camonica. An action that also redeems the tepidity, if not the connivance, with which many Catholics had accepted fascism. «They called us to pray and bless flags, pennants, tombs, monuments on the most auspicious dates. We had our religion class in schools. We were comfortable and mistook divine Providence for a ploy”, wrote Don Giacomo Vender in 1941.
But it is a connivance to which Catholics cannot lend themselves because, as he claimed Gian Andrea Trebeschi, a great anti-fascist Catholic, friend of Montini, who died in Dachau-Gusen-Mauthausen on 24 January 1945, «Catholics can be victims or rebels, never instruments of violence and oppression».
