CALABIANA, NAZARI LUIGI, Count of. – Bishop, b. 27 July 1808 at Savigliano, d. 23 Oct. 1893 at Milan. Elected on 12 Apr. 1847 bishop of Casale, he served as almoner to King Charles Albert. To the high episcopal dignity “they had raised him,” as the President of the Senate Farini remarked in the commemoration delivered at Palazzo Madama on 23 Nov. 1893, “by his exemplary life, his learning, his piety; ever more they exalted him by his evangelical meekness and apostolic zeal.”
On 3 May 1848 he was appointed senator. Of patriotic sentiments and ready to welcome new ideas within the limits permitted by Catholic faith and the freedom of the Church, he soon found himself compelled to raise his voice in defence of the Church’s rights during the debate on the Siccardi bill for the abolition of the ecclesiastical forum. “I call legal,” he declared in the session of 8 Apr. 1850, “that reform which is enacted by a civil government independently of the Roman See concerning matters which, besides being ecclesiastical by nature and regulated by special canon laws, have been defined by mutual agreement of the two powers”; grave would be the consequences of this unilateral act of the Sardinian Government. A conflict between Church and State would arise, “a conflict all the more painful in that the need for good accord between priesthood and empire is now greater”; this conflict would place the episcopate in straits and fears, “for on the one hand it would wish to obey the Government, and on the other it must venerate and observe the canonical laws.” The feared rupture was not avoided; the bill was approved by Parliament and sanctioned by the sovereign, and further and sharper battles awaited the bishop of Casale, senator of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
In 1852 the Minister of Justice Boncompagni presented a bill on civil marriage, which was not approved by the Senate and had to be withdrawn by the government. On this occasion too the Count delivered a learned discourse, demonstrating that the so-called civil marriage, lacking sacramental consecration, had to be regarded, according to the Tridentine canons, as outright concubinage.
Noteworthy is the action taken by Senator C. against the suppression of religious communities and ecclesiastical establishments proposed by Cavour and Rattazzi in the Chamber in 1854. At the suggestion of King Victor Emmanuel II and various senators opposed to the suppression of convents, the bishop of Casale declared on 26 Apr. 1855 that the episcopate of the kingdom was prepared to assume the burden of the annual sum inscribed in the state budget for the clergy and worship, pending the conclusion of a new concordat with the Holy See to settle the controversy by mutual agreement. The offer, however, was not welcomed by Cavour, who tendered the resignation of his ministry to the king.
Once the crisis had opened and the question had been framed solely on a political, not a financial, basis—namely, to grant the State the power to act on its own authority in ecclesiastical matters, independently of agreements with the Church—the crisis ended in Cavour’s favour, and shortly thereafter this “unjust, illegal, anti-religious, inhuman” law was passed. From then on C. no longer attended Senate sittings. He made only a brief appearance in 1865 during the debate on the bill for legislative unification, again opposing civil marriage as he had done two decades earlier. On 27 Mar. 1867 he was transferred from Casale to the archiepiscopal see of Milan.
Here C. found himself facing a difficult and thorny situation. In effect the see of St Ambrose had been vacant since the death of Romilli, for Ballerini, proposed in the Consistory of 20 June 1889 to fill the high dignity, had been unable to exercise it because of his reputation as an Austrian sympathiser. Clergy and faithful were divided into two camps: on one side, the intransigents who in no way admitted the new state of affairs created in Lombardy by the end of Hapsburg rule; on the other, the liberals who were well disposed towards the House of Savoy and believed in a fair and not distant regulation of relations between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See, between Church and State. Spokesman for the intransigents was a combative and violent newspaper, L’Osservatore Cattolico of Don Albertario, which spared no attacks even on prelates worthy of every respect such as Bonomelli and Scalabrini, solely because they had the misfortune to adopt a more measured and conciliatory tone.
The work of C. was far-sighted: with patience, yet with firmness where necessary, he gradually succeeded in bringing about a relaxation of tensions, effectively contributing through his action to the restoration of a calmer climate that later facilitated the integration of Catholic forces into the political life of the nation.