Giovanni Battista Montini (Paul VI) and the modern world, 1925–33. Part I

Abstract

Abstract The following article analyses the relationship between Giovanni Battista Montini (Paul VI) and the modern world during his years at the Federazione Universitaria Cattolica Italiana (FUCI). Contrary to what has been suggested by scholars of the subject, it is argued in the following pages that the line followed by Montini and the FUCI during the 1925–33 period was one characterised to a large extent by a spirit of condemnation of the modern world and modernity more generally, a spirit fuelled by an intransigent spirit of restoration of a Catholic Europe, and animated by a vision of and ideological and totalising Catholicism.