CURCI, CARLO MARIA. - Jesuit, orator and polemicist, b. in Naples on 4 Sept. 1809, d. at Careggi (Florence) on 19 June 1891. His name is linked to the strenuous defense of his Order, at very difficult and dangerous moments, against the calumnies spread lavishly in the works of V. Gioberti, and to the painful episode of his struggle against the Vatican and the temporal sovereignty of the Holy See.
Favorable at first to Gioberti (he had an edition of the Primato printed at Benevento), he later opposed him fiercely with: Fatti ed argomenti in risposta alle molte parole di V. Gioberti intorno ai Gesuiti (Naples 1845) concerning the Prolegomeni del Primato. The lashing made a stir; the abbot replied and C. countered with: Una divinazione sopra le tre ultime opere di V. Gioberti: «I prolegomeni», «Il Gesuita moderno» e l'«Apologia» (2 vols., Paris 1849). Convinced by then of the necessity of temporal power for the Holy See, he defended it in La demagogia italiana e il Papa Re. Pensieri di un retrogrado (Paris 1849). Shortly afterward, in 1850, he founded in Naples La Civiltà Cattolica (v.) with the collaboration of other fathers, and assumed its direction, which did not last long, because already in 1853 he returned to preaching in Rome and from 1872 in Florence.
His ideas, meanwhile, were changing, and from a defender of temporal power he passed to the opposite side, maintaining that its loss ought to be considered a blessing and that the Church ought to attempt a reconciliation with the new Italy, even at the price of a full renunciation (cf. the Ragione dell'opera, preface to his Lezioni esegetiche e morali sopra i quattro Evangeli [5 vols., Florence 1874-76], which constitute his best work and in which he expressed his ideas in public for the first time, reaffirmed in a memorial to the Pope). Having refused to recant, he was dismissed from the Order (1877) and continued to write, now more freely, against the Pope and the Jesuits with: « Il moderno dissidio tra la Chiesa e l'Italia per occasione di un fatto particolare (Florence 1878); La nuova Italia ed i vecchi zelanti (ibid. 1880); Il Vaticano regio, tarlo superstite della Chiesa cattolica (ibid. 1883); Lo scandalo del « Vaticano regio », duce la Provvidenza, buono a qualchecosa (ibid. 1884). The last three works were placed on the Index (1881 and 1884), the author was suspended, and by Leo XIII (letter of 28 Aug. 1884 to the archbishop of Florence, in P. Galletti, Memorie storiche del p. Luigi Ricasoli, Prato 1901, pp. 609-10) again deplored and condemned. C. made a retraction of his errors, submitting himself to the judgment of the Church (1884), and from then on he lived privately and obscurely. Ten days before his death, he was readmitted into the Society of Jesus.
Besides the works mentioned, he wrote others worthy of being remembered: Il paganesimo antico e moderno (Rome 1862); Il cristianesimo antico e moderno (ibid. 1862); La natura e la Grazia (ibid. 1865); Lezioni sui due libri dei Maccabei (Rome 1872); Memorie utili di una vita disutile (Florence 1881).