ITALIAN CATHOLICS AND THE TRANSIT TO POST-FASCISM, 1943-1945

Abstract

The FUCI was the official organisation for the laity of Italian Catholic Action for the university sector and exists until the present day.1 As such, it was an important element of the lay Catholic world within Fascist Italy, as well as having a wider presence within Italian society. Thus, the study of the FUCI provides a means of studying the dynamics of Catholicism within Fascist Italy. At the same time, however, the FUCI has a wider significance for the study of Catholic politics and intellectual ideas within Italy, as a remarkably large proportion of the future Christian Democrats who would rule the destinies of the country after the Second World War received much of their intellectual training in the ranks of the federation.2 Additionally, in the 1925-33 period, the central ecclesiastical assistant of the organisation was Giovanni Battista Montini, the future pope Paul VI.