Albertario, Don Davide

ALBERTARIO, don DAVIDE. - Priest and Catholic writer, b. at Filighera (Pavia) in 1846, d. at Carenno (Bergamo) on 12 Sept. 1902. For some thirty years, after 1870, he was the most brilliant journalist and the most effective polemicist in the service of the Catholic cause in Italy. His name and his activity are linked to the Osservatore Cattolico, a Milanese daily, of which he was editor. For the first 20 years he fought against Rosminian theories and above all against political liberalism. After Rerum novarum he was one of the pioneers of the movement of ideas and works that took the name of Christian democracy. When in 1898 the Minister of the Interior Di Rudini dissolved more than 6,000 Catholic associations under the accusation of subversivism, even the Catholic newspapers that defended them were struck down and their editors put on trial. A. was arrested in his home and sentenced by the military court to three years' imprisonment and a fine of one thousand lire. That painful experience, which increased his great popularity, made him understand the necessity of a participation of Catholics in the political life of the country. He thus passed from the defense of the famous formula "Neither elected, nor electors" of the intransigent journalist and polemicist D. Margotti, to that already launched by the Osservatore romano, "Preparation in abstention." For the younger forces of militant Catholicism the Milanese daily and its valiant editor became a banner.