ALBERTARIO, DON DAVIDE

DON DAVIDE ALBERTARIO. - A Catholic priest and writer, born in Filighera (Pavia) in 1846, died in Caerano (Bergamo) on 12 September 1902. For three decades 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 activity are closely linked to *L'Osservatore Cattolico*, the Milanese daily newspaper of which he was editor. For the first twenty years, he fought against Rosmini’s theories and especially against political liberalism. After the *Rerum novarum*, he became 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 Rudinì, dissolved over six thousand Catholic associations on charges of subversion, the Catholic newspapers that defended them were also targeted, and their editors prosecuted. A. was arrested in his home and sentenced by a court-martial to three years’ imprisonment and a fine of one thousand lire. That painful experience, which increased his great popularity, led him to understand the necessity of Catholic participation in the political life of the country. He thus moved from the defense of the famous formula “Neither elected nor electors” of the intransigent polemicist D. Mar-gotti to the one already promoted by *L'Osservatore Romano*, “Preparation through abstention.” For the younger forces of militant Catholicism, the Milanese daily and its valiant editor became a banner.