From the Italian re-unification until the 1970s

CC’s antagonistic approach to public social assistance characterised the first phase. The CC played a quasi-monopoly role in services’ delivery in these fields. Since the creation of the Italian state in 1861 and for a long time, social assistance and social services were mostly delivered by charities connected to the CC (the so-called ‘Opere Pie’), with the state playing a very limited role (David, Reference David and Ascoli1984). The early national legislation brought in by the newly created Italian state made it clear that it did not want to enter into conflict with the Church that ran and controlled the charities (Fargion, Reference Fargion1997). Until the end of the century, the dominant idea was that the CC charity system offered such potentiality that it exonerated the State of financial commitment. Fascism continued this tradition and gave considerable autonomy to Church charities (Ascoli and Arlotti, Reference Ascoli, Arlotti, Manuel and Glatzer2019). The system of social assistance inherited from the Fascist period was the base of the social protection system established after World War II and during the ‘Glorious Thirty’ (Madama, Reference Madama2010). It was only in the 1970s and, particularly toward the end of that decade that a new public commitment toward public social assistance vices was developed (David, Reference David and Ascoli1984). However, the strong opposition of many religious institutions to a stronger public commitment, supported also by the centrality and strength of the main (Catholic) party in Italy, the Christian Democracy (DC), inhibited for many years the approval of a national framework on social assistance (Madama, Reference Madama2010; Ascoli and Arlotti, Reference Ascoli, Arlotti, Manuel and Glatzer2019).

During all this first phase, migration policies were not on the agenda for a very simple reason: from a demographic point of view, migration toward Italy from outside Western European countries remained quantitatively limited until the end of the 1980s.

From opposition to consent in the 1990s and the 2000s

The long-established Church position toward public social assistance began to change at a faster pace starting in the 1990s. From an antagonist approach to public intervention, consent to the role of public social assistance became the new position. The key concept increasingly used in official CC documents was subsidiarity (Colozzi, Reference Colozzi2012). The approach and the specific meaning given to subsidiarity were in this second phase a communitarian one, referring to the idea (typical of other countries where the CC played a role within a religiously pluralistic society, such as the Netherlands or Germany), the state should provide resources and then leave room to local civic society in order to provide answers to social needs. However, within this idea of communitarian solidarity there was not really a focus on citizenship and social rights.

Looking at social assistance, the 1990s and 2000s were years when there were many new initiatives by local authorities, regional ones and the third sector, thanks to the diffusion of new voluntary organisations (Ascoli et al., Reference Ascoli, Ranci, Pavolini, Ascoli and Ranci2002). The number of individuals joining voluntary organisations went from 3.4 million in 1993 to 5.7 million in 2018 (in terms of share of population respectively around 7 per cent and 10.5 per cent). Catholic activism in the field of social assistance and social services renewed especially in the wake of a growing expansion of volunteerism. Within the volunteers’ world, regular worshipper Catholics (defined as those attending at least weekly to religious services) played a very important role: around 46 per cent of all volunteers were in 1993 regular churchgoers; this share went down to 40 per cent in 2018 (Ascoli and Pavolini, Reference Ascoli and Pavolini2017). At the same time, the increase in the number of people volunteering meant that Catholic volunteers were around 1.6 million in 1993 and 2.3 million in 2018.

Indeed in 2000, after many years of debate and strong political conflict, the Italian Parliament passed the national framework law on the integrated system of social services (Law 328/00). This law contained an extended subsidiarisation of social assistance, both between the state, regions, and local authorities and between public and private (non-profit and for-profit) actors. The approval of a good part of Catholic institutions helped to pass the law (Ascoli and Arlotti, Reference Ascoli, Arlotti, Manuel and Glatzer2019).

This new activism by local authorities and non-profit organisations was also the result of the emerging and progressive diffusion of new social risks in the Italian society, including (irregular) migrants, especially since the second part of the 1990s (Bassi, Reference Bassi2014). In fact, Catholic institutions such as Caritas, as well as non-profit organisations with a Catholic inspiration, were at the forefront of intervention in the field of social assistance to migrants already in the 1990s, when migration started to become a structural facet in Italian society (Caritas Migrantes, 1993; see also Figure 2). Especially in the richer part of the country (Centre-Northern Italy), poverty decreased during the 1990s to relatively low levels among native Italians. At the same time, poverty problems were more common among migrants. Therefore, in the 1990s social assistance services (shelters, meals, etc.) were in a large part of Italy a policy area mostly involving intervention in favour of migrants (Itçaina, Reference Itçaina2014). In this phase, assisting foreign migrants was the CC approach, thematising the issue not in terms of rights but mainly of ‘social duty’ toward those in need, which happened to be increasingly foreign migrants.

The 2010s: Italian Catholicism and social policy in times of (right-wing) populism and increasing social needs

The last decade discussed in this article witnessed many changes in Italy. First, a massive rise in social needs, due to the economic crisis. In the European context, Italy was among the countries most severely affected by the impact of the great economic recession since 2007. Consequently, there was a structural increase in poverty and deprivation. The number of individuals in relative poverty went from 6 million to 9 million (26 per cent of the total population) (authors’ elaboration on I.stat online database http://dati.istat.it/). This phenomenon hit the whole country: there was for the first time in decades a high diffusion of poverty even in the wealthiest regions. Second, the absence of an adequate social assistance system reinforced the negative effects of the crisis on the expansion of poverty and social exclusion. Until 2017, there was no general minimum income scheme at the national level. Moreover, severe austerity measures introduced during the crisis implied draconian reductions in financial transfers from the state to local authorities, which bear the responsibility to provide social services (Guillén and Pavolini, Reference Guillén and Pavolini2015; Pavolini et al., Reference Pavolini, León, Guillén and Ascoli2015). Third, after the collapse of the Libyan regime with the death of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011 and the civil war that broke out afterwards, a new flow of irregular migrants started to arrive from Libya to Italian coasts. If around 20 thousand people came by boat in 2007, the number of landings reached 181 thousand in 2016. The sudden rise of landings in only a few years became a central issue in the Italian political debate, especially thanks to right-wing parties, in particular the League, which were able to transform this issue into the pivotal one in Italian political debates (the phenomenon was defined as ‘the invasion of Italy’).

It is within this context that the Italian CC’s positions on social assistance and migration policies have to be framed. Since the beginning of the last decade, Catholic welfare organisations have increasingly pressed on the central government to introduce a universal minimum income scheme in order to cope with the structural expansion of poverty and deprivation in Italy. In 2013, two of the most important Catholic organisations, Caritas and Acli (the Christian Associations of Italian Workers), promoted an intense mobilisation on this topic calling many other civic society organisations (including also the main trade unions) to join and forming the ‘Alleanza contro la povertà’ (Alliance against poverty – AAP; see here: http://www.redditoinclusione.it/il-patto-aperto-contro-la-poverta/presentazione-alleanza/). AAP has been since then a wide political platform in which more than thirty (religious and non-religious) organisations, engaged in the field of poverty and social exclusion, have become involved in order to sensitise public opinion and to develop a proposal aimed to introduce a new universal minimum income scheme (Alleanza contro la povertà, 2015). The national government took (partially) into consideration the AAP proposal, when it drafted and introduced in 2017 a national minimum income scheme. Moreover, the central government and the AAP signed a specific memorandum in May 2017, regarding the main steps for the implementation of this new public programme.

In relation to this policy process, the CC strongly supported the AAP’s proposal for the introduction of a universal measure to combat poverty; as stated, for example, by the then President of the CEI, Bagnasco – ‘it seems necessary to pay the utmost attention to the attempt to introduce a universal programme to combat poverty and to the development of a National Plan against Poverty’ (Avvenire, 2017a). In the same vein, the then secretary of the CEI, Galantino declared: ‘The bishops raise their voices in order to ask for a National Plan against Poverty … if politicians will not adopt measures to help families in need, they will pave the road to Populist Parties’ (Avvenire, 2017b).

The last sentence pronounced by Galantino introduces another important stand made in recent years by the Italian CC: its opposition to populism and its position in favor of migration policies that would allow welcoming more migrants in Italy than the policy of closing borders proposed by populist parties. The Church position on migrants has come at times when many Italians are not in favour of new migrants. For instance in 2016, 58 per cent of Italians agreed in the European Social Survey that the country should allow few/no migrants from different ethnic/race groups. The general position of the Church on the issue of migration can be summarised through two concepts: openness and critique to nationalism/xenophobia. As stated by the current President of the CEI Bassetti: ‘the concept of charity has to be understood in opposition to the arguments of those who play with fears. We must avoid in all possible ways that a sort of “war between poor people” spreads’ (Avvenire, 2017c: 2). The issue of policies accepting and welcoming migrants is highly explicit also in the Vatican’s declarations. In this respect, the current Pope has made unambiguous his support to refugees, asylum seekers and migrants in general. The Pope used four basic verbs to testify the CC position on migration in the context of the celebrations for the 104th World Day of Migrants and Refugees in 2018: ‘to welcome, to protect, to promote, and to integrate’ (Avvenire, 2018a: 2). Not only Pope Francis spoke but also acted accordingly in order to make clearer his message. For example, the first visit of Pope Francis in his papacy in 2013 was to the Sicilian island of Lampedusa, which represents one of the main landings of irregular migrants trying to arrive by boat to Italy. Moreover, the same Pope took back some migrants with him on his plane back to Italy after a visit to the Greek island of Lesbos.

In general, the CC declared on many occasions the intention not to abdicate its guiding role but rather to affirm an alternative strategy to the populist and nationalist-xenophobic one on migration policies. The president of the CEI, Bassetti declared: ‘Unfortunately, there is an increasing refusal against migrants arriving in our country. The economic crisis fuels such refusal and demagoguery amplifies it. The migrant-criminal equation, also proposed by the media, is not only a falsehood but also a prejudice rooted in selfishness. It is necessary to overcome indifference and put a generous welcoming attitude before fears. The Italian Church does not mind receiving criticism for its ideas’ (Avvenire, 2017d: 5). Similarly, the CEI permanent council stated in 2019: ‘Even at the price of losing a certain degree of popularity, the Church feels the need to actively contribute to a culture of integration, as well as overcoming indifference in the face of the tragedy of those who disappear in the Mediterranean or are tortured in the refugee camps of Libya’ (Avvenire, 2019).

Overall, a critical stance has characterised the CC’s position with respect to migration policies of recent governments. The catholic critique to recent ‘law-and-order policies’ has come mainly through the mobilisation of the large world of associations and Catholic organisations committed on the issue of migration (e.g. Caritas, Migrantes Foundation, etc.). The Church criticised strongly the Italy-Libya agreements, signed by the centre-left government in 2018 and aimed at curbing immigration, keeping many migrants in Libya (Avvenire, 2017e). Furthermore, the ‘safety’ decrees of the then Gentiloni government received strong criticisms. According to Caritas, once again the migration issue was ‘framed according to a safety perspective which for us, at this stage, is not a priority’ (Avvenire, 2017f). The critical position of the Church continued and became even stronger with the advent of the populist government in 2018 (formed by the 5SM and the radical right League), when the government’s declarations and its willingness to ‘safeguard Italians’ against migration became explicit. The last Catholic attack came a few months before the populist government collapsed. The critique was for the so-called ‘safety’ bills of 2018-19, which according to Caritas went ‘in the direction of closure, focusing on expulsion and making integration difficult, instead of investing in social integration’ (Avvenire, 2018b).

Institutions

The CC acted in an institutional environment characterised traditionally by low state involvement in social assistance. Until the recent reform introducing a national minimum income programme in 2017, social assistance was relatively underdeveloped in Italy especially compared to other Western European countries (Jessoula and Madama, Reference Jessoula and Madama2018). However, something has changed since the 1990s in Italy thanks to the diffusion of social innovation practices (Ascoli and Pavolini, Reference Ascoli and Pavolini2015): many local and regional authorities started to develop their own local programmes, usually in collaboration with the third sector. In other terms, the shift from phase I to phase II meant: no changes in (absent) national policies, but increasing active and innovative experiences at the regional and local level, also thanks to decentralisation reforms that provided more autonomy since the 1990s to sub-national tiers of government (Kazepov, Reference Kazepov2008). The shift from phase II to phase III brought further change. The national level remained ‘frozen’ (until the 2017 reform). Meanwhile social innovation in many local and regional authorities collapsed: the crisis and the austerity cuts reduced enormously the funding to local authorities and their ability to intervene in these two policy areas, as underlined in the previous section.

Interests

Traditionally one important interest for the CC in social assistance was to preserve the autonomy its charities had enjoyed over centuries. However, the passage from phase I to phase II witnessed a transformation in the nature and characteristics of catholic organisations in social assistance and migration policies. Increasingly Caritas and recently founded non-profit voluntary organisations, created mostly since the 1980s and 1990s, started to substitute century-long charities active in social assistance. These new organisations were often working closely and in collaboration with local and regional authorities in a model much more integrated than the one typical for traditional charities (through contracting-out and joint planning activities) (Ascoli and Pavolini, Reference Ascoli and Pavolini2017). Therefore, supporting the welfare mix and public-private collaboration became more important for the CC than simply advocating for the Charities’ autonomy, because they were somewhat more embedded in contracting-out with public authorities. In this respect, during this II phase there were partially divergent interests within the CC between century-long charities and new non-profit organisations, but the latter were somewhat more active and connected to local communities and public authorities. Moreover, these ‘new’ non-profit organisations were at the forefront of interventions in migration policies, very often supported, if not created, by Caritas.

The shift from phase II to phase III was a continuation of the previous phase, at times when supporting Catholic organisations involved in social policies became even more complicated given the situation of mounting social needs and austerity cuts to local authorities’ funding, which endangered the survival of many of these non-profit organisations. In this respect, it is important to highlight that the AAP proposed to combine income benefits with activation programs, requiring explicitly a role in the programme for third sector organisations, also the religious ones, in the co-definition of goals and provision of (contracted-out) services. In this phase, century-long charities became less and less present and important compared to the grooming of ‘new’ non-profit Catholic organisations.

Ideas

The shift in the CC position on social assistance from phase I to phase II was also the result of the cultural theological debate that led to the II Vatican Council in the 1960s and, even more importantly, of the one that stemmed out of this Council in the following decades. In particular, the CC implemented the II Vatican Council theological message as a call aimed at, on one hand, a Catholic direct involvement in social issues at the local level (Marzano and Pace, Reference Marzano and Pace2013), on the other hand, the promotion not just of social assistance but also of social justice and policy advocacy, as explained in the previous section (Ascoli et al., Reference Ascoli, Ranci, Pavolini, Ascoli and Ranci2002). The II Vatican Council explicitly stated that the CC had the duty to speak out against injustice and to take the voices of the afflicted as her own. The ideas of social justice permeated also CC organisations involved in social assistance, such as Caritas (Pavolini, Reference Pavolini2003). In other terms, the vast new world of catholic non-profit and religious organisations, which took the central stage in the social assistance field since the 1990s, was interested not only in ‘charitable activities’ but also in framing their action in terms of fighting social exclusion and advocating for social justice (Ascoli and Arlotti, Reference Ascoli, Arlotti, Manuel and Glatzer2019). The socio-cultural innovation ‘from above’, thanks to the II Vatican Council teaching, and ‘from below’, thanks to many of these new grassroots catholic organisations (often linked to Caritas), helped slowly but steadily to transform over time how the CC framed social assistance and, as migrants increasingly arrived later on in Italy, migration policies in a more universalistic and progressive direction than in previous decades. In this respect the main ideational change occurred between phases II and I with the II Vatican Council. The later decades were used to develop and to implement the core teaching from the Council. In particular, the step between phases III and II was mainly an incremental one, with an important strengthening factor: the rise to the pontificate of Pope Francis. In this case it is both his personal agency and how he has interpreted solidarity and the CC’s social involvement that are important, as well as the fact that the roots of his theological thinking come from the Jesuits tradition (in Latin America), whose doctrine has been strongly focused on social justice under the leadership of Pedro Arrupe as Superior General in the 1960-70s (La Bella, Reference La Bella2007). Jesuits’ thoughts and also part of the Latin American CC approach to social issues have been the backbone of Pope Francis’s positions on social assistance and migrant policies, framed in terms of social justice. In this respect, his position as Pope is in line with the theological orientation stemming out of the Latin American Bishops Conference’s pastoral work (in particular, the 2007 Aparecida document, led by Cardinal Bergoglio, the later Pope Francis). The Pope’s letter to his ‘brothers and sisters of popular movements and organizations’ on Easter Sunday in April 2020 expresses very well the concept: ‘this may be the time to consider a universal basic wage which would acknowledge and dignify the noble, essential tasks you carry out. It would ensure and concretely achieve the ideal, at once so human and so Christian, of no worker without rights’ (Pope Francis, 2020: 2).

Moral authority in politics

Given the fact that the present article analyses the relationship between social policy, religion and (radical-right) populism, the concept of Church’s ‘moral authority’ in politics, introduced by Grzymala-Busse (Reference Grzymala-Busse2015), becomes very useful when studying religious influence on social policies, because it is strictly connected to the role of power and how social policies are presented by the CC in the public debate. There are several valuable findings in the book for our research goals, even when they do not refer just to Italy but to several North American and European countries. First, Churches gain their greatest political advantage when they can appear to be above petty politics and a Church’s ability to enter corridors of power depends on its historical record of defending the nation:

Second, Churches translate religious nationalism and doctrinal convictions into policy depending on their moral authority level: ‘Where Churches have lower or more diffuse moral authority, they could enter partisan coalitions… Those Churches with high moral authority could obtain institutional access – a far more powerful way of influencing politics than either partisan coalitions or relying on diffuse voter demand. Institutional access was largely covert and viewed as non-partisan’ (ibidem: 332).

Where is Italy located according to Grzymala-Busse’s reconstruction? If we adopt the three phases used in the previous section, the first important change in this respect took place in the shift from phase I (1860-1980) to phase II (1990-2000). The CC’s opposition to Italian state unification in the nineteenth century created a disconnection between nationalism and religion, shaping a long-lasting separation between these two concepts. Something very different happened in Ireland or Poland, where the CC fought for national identity and respectively for independence and against communism. Even during a long period of the twentieth century, the CC in Italy was not able to regain this type of ‘moral authority’ in politics. Part of the liberals remained sceptical and suspicious toward the Church and left-wing parties, especially communists (Italy had the strongest communist party in the West), were very critical. Paradoxically the CC’s moral authority in Italian politics increased after 1990 with the collapse of socialism in Central-Eastern Europe (and of the Communist party in Italy), the breakdown of traditional Italian parties due to scandals (including the DC) and the shift to a majoritarian political system. The CC started to be trusted moreFootnote ¹ and to act as a neutral and non-partisan actor, opening an intense political dialogue with both left-wing and right-wing parties (Ceccarini, Reference Ceccarini and Haynes2010). In the new majoritarian system introduced in the mid-1990s, the CC influence on catholic voters became even more valuable for parties trying to attract median voters. Furthermore, the CC started to change its public profile. On one hand, it took a strong position in terms of pro-national and pro-state identity, criticising openly the separatist movements from Northern Italy (the party called League, which has become a radical-right and populist one in recent years, was in previous decades a regional/separatist party, called the Northern League), corruption in politics and Mafia’ actions (ibidem). On the other hand, its position cannot be defined as nationalist in the traditional sense: it was only against actors wanting to weaken Italy as a nation state that it rose its voice. At the same time, the CC continued adopting an ecumenical internationalist solidarity approach to migration, declaring that human rights came first (Ascoli and Arlotti, Reference Ascoli, Arlotti, Manuel and Glatzer2019).

The shift from Phase II (1990-2000) to the III phase (the 2010s) did not witness a particular change in respect to moral authority. The critique on nationalism-xenophobia and populism seems to be part of a longer tradition of the CC, which started since the 1990s to actively defend the nation-state and the values of the Republic, as well as international solidarity. In this respect, the confrontation with the League and right-wing populists has become even harsher because, for the first time since the onset of the Italian Republic, there are relevant (in terms of public support) right-wing parties attracting voters and combining nationalism and religion. In other terms, these radical right political parties (the League being the most popular but not the only one) are able to attract many voters and try to ‘compete’ with the CC in terms of declaring they want to protect traditional religious values, and making it a matter of defense of national identity (the ‘Christian-Jewish roots of Europe’). In this respect, these Italian parties follow a strategy adopted already some decades ago in the US by the Republican party (Grzymala-Busse, Reference Grzymala-Busse2015). This strategy is becoming increasingly common also among other radical-right parties in Europe, as the article on France from Peker (Reference Peker2020) shows in this themed section. The result is an increasing cultural-political clash between these new nationalist/xenophobic parties, using religion as a strategic identitarian tool (the League leader M. Salvini has repeatedly kissed the crucifix and the rosary in public as a sign of Catholic devotion), and those Churches, as the Italian one, that have adopted a different model of mixing religion and the idea of the nation.