Jesuits and elections
Today, in both local and political elections, Jesuits, like all Italian citizens, go to the polls to cast their votes.
This participation in voting has not always been so ‘taken for granted’ for all religious.
Let us take a little journey back in time, from the last decades of the 19th century, in order to delve into the behaviour of the Jesuits in elections.
With the famous ‘non expedit’, wanted by Pius IX, Catholics were forbidden to participate in the political life of the new Kingdom of Italy, born in 1861, extending also to the city of Rome, once the Papal State fell in 1870.
Catholics would not have been allowed to be elected or to take part in elections, especially religious women and men. The ban weakened over time, but was only repealed in 1919.
We know from Lorenzo Rocci’s diary that the Jesuit had gone to the polls long before that date.
In fact, Rocci first mentions the local elections of June 1902, voting in Rome, then returns to talk about numerous subsequent elections: the local elections of July 1905, the municipal elections in Rome in May 1907, the municipal elections in Monte Porzio in which he took part because he was living in Villa Mondragone in June 1908, he mentions other elections in 1909, 1910, 1913, and those in Salso Maggiore where he was on holiday in 1914. We know that in November 1919 he voted for the newly founded Italian People’s Party in the political elections. He returned to vote for it in 1921. Here we interrupt the references to elections that would be almost completely absent during the twenty-year Fascist period.
P. Rocci also had the opportunity to visit the Italian Parliament, attending one of the sessions as an auditor. It was 12 June 1902, and the Jesuit recalls the fear he experienced: the Concordat with the Catholic Church did not yet exist, so the climate between religious and State was still tense.
Nevertheless, Rocci is reassured, we quote his words here:
we could not refuse the Hon. Maury’s invitation to visit Parliament and then to enter his tribune for the sitting: I kept back, but ceased to be agitated when I saw that there were many priests in the tribunes, and even in the front row: I kept myself under the arch of the little door, unseen.
After the Second World War, some Jesuits took part in the election campaign for the Christian Democrats, and in the diaries at home we keep some leaflets that were distributed.
The film ‘Peppone e Don Camillo’, in an ironic way, emphasised the participation of parish priests and religious in the public debate and electoral campaign, often in open dispute with the Communist party, during this period.
In the photo accompanying today’s in-depth study, Fr. Antonio Micheli is portrayed, at the ballot box for the municipal council elections, and there is also a typewritten report on the contribution provided by the community of Lonigo to propaganda for the Christian Democratic Party: through the printing and distribution of leaflets, the organisation of video projections and newsreels for ‘media’ coverage of the event.
Maria Macchi
