WORK OF THE CONGRESSES AND CATHOLIC COMMITTEES IN ITALY. – It was the principal organization of Italian Catholics. On 2 October 1870, the Superior Council of Italian Catholic Youth resolved to found an organization that would unite all Catholic forces, following the example of Belgium and Germany. The organization came into being after the First Catholic Congress, held in Venice (12–16 June 1874) under the presidency of Duke Scipione Salviati of Rome, to commemorate the centenary of the Battle of Lepanto. At that time, the Superior Council of Italian Catholic Youth declared itself to be a permanent committee, subsequently organizing the Second Congress, held from 22 to 26 September 1875 in Fiesole, with the aim of establishing a stable organization governed by a national committee. It was on this occasion that the Declaration of Principles (a kind of profession of faith) was pronounced for the first time, drafted by Baron Vito D’Ondes Reggio of Palermo, patriot and deputy to Parliament, who resigned after 20 September 1870. The permanent committee became the Work of the Congresses and organized the next seventeen Italian Catholic congresses, which guided the thought and action of Italian Catholics for more than a quarter of a century.
The first president of the Work was Giovanni Acquarini (v.), who had already founded Italian Catholic Youth together with Mario Fani. He gave the organization a national character with regional, diocesan, and parish committees. Acquarini promoted the Third Congress, opened in Bologna on 9 October 1876 under the presidency of Duke Salvati, which was dissolved after the first session due to “public order” concerns in the face of many anticlerical demonstrators, and the Fourth Congress in Bergamo from 10 to 14 October 1877, with the presidency entrusted to Baron Vito D’Ondes Reggio. The presidency then passed from Acquarini to Duke Scipione Salvati (1878), who convened the Fifth Congress in Modena from 21 to 24 October 1879 and, only four years later, succeeded in promoting the Sixth Congress in Naples (10–14 October 1883), where the definitive Statute of the Work was promulgated, with the aim “to unite the Catholics of Italy in a common and harmonious action for the defense of the rights of the Holy See and the religious and social interests of Italians.” The presidency of the Congress was held by the Prince of Bisignano.
In 1885, Duke Salvati was succeeded as general president of the Work by the Bolognese physician Dr. Marcellino Venturoli, who held the position for five years, though only one congress was held during his tenure, the Seventh, held in Lucca (19–23 April 1887), which took place under his own presidency.
In September 1889, the permanent committee concentrated its votes on the young Venetian lawyer G. B. Paganuzzi, who had taken part in almost all the previous congresses and had brought new and youthful elements into the Catholic movement. With his appointment, the most flourishing and active period of the Work began. Paganuzzi invited other distinguished men to join the permanent committee, including Prof. Giuseppe Toniolo, who was to give the movement a soundly social direction and all of Catholic Action. The Eighth Congress, held in Lodi (23–27 October 1890), marked a first revival of activity, held under Paganuzzi’s own presidency, with the participation of combative young men led by Filippo Meda (v.) of Milan, who directed the organ of the Committee for the Centenary Festivities of St. Aloysius Gonzaga, in agreement with Monsignor Sarto, then Bishop of Mantua.
In 1891 (14–17 September), under Paganuzzi’s presidency, the General Congress (the Ninth) was convened in Vicenza. It was the year of *Rerum novarum*, the starting point for a new activity among Catholics throughout the world—social activity, to which Toniolo (v.), together with Callegari (v.) Medolago Albani (v.), had been devoting himself for some time.
In 1892 there were two congresses, both in Genoa: the Tenth of the Work (4–8 October), presided over by Marquis Giannazzo di Sangineto, and the First of the Union for Social Studies. The Eleventh Congress was held in Rome from 15 to 17 February 1894, presided over by Prince Francesco Massimo, and in the same year (9–13 September), presided over by Count Francesco Viancini (v.), the Twelfth was held in Pavia, under the auspices of that distinguished bishop, Monsignor Riboldi. By 1895, the Work was at the height of its development. From 9 to 13 September, presided over by Baron Luigi de Matteis, it held its Twelfth Congress in Turin, and the following year (31 August–4 September 1896), presided over by Count Alberto de Moiana, the Fourteenth in Fiesole (where the Italian Catholic University Federation [v.] was founded), followed in 1897 by the Fifteenth (30 August–3 September), presided over by Marquis Lorenzo Bottini in Milan, on the occasion of the centenary of the death of St. Ambrose. In that year, the Work of the Congresses counted 3,982 parish committees, 708 youth sections, 12 university circles, 700 rural banks, an equal number of workers’ societies, 24 Catholic banks, and an insurance company.
It included the following sections or groups: religious works and associations; then, from the Seventh Congress, Catholic organization and association, Christian or Christian-democratic popular action, with a subsection (1901) for the legal defense of pious works, education and instruction, the press, and Christian art. The most important group was the second (originally called the “Charity” section; from the Fifth Congress “Catholic Charity and Economics”; from 1902 “Christian Popular Action”), from which the idea of Christian Democracy matured, finding in Giuseppe Toniolo its most brilliant and competent exponent, especially with his famous Roman speech on *The Christian Concept of Democracy*. The novelty, however, divided and poisoned the minds of Catholics. In 1898, after the revolutionary disturbances, the liberal-masonic reaction, lumping socialists and Catholics together, imposed—through the work of Minister Di Rudinì—the dissolution of the Work of the Congresses and its committees.
It was, however, a brief interlude. In 1899, the threads could be rewoven and the congress of the revival (the Sixteenth) was held in Ferrara (18–21 April), still under Paganuzzi’s direction, who entrusted its effective presidency to Marquis Filippo Crispolti.
At this time, the youthful forces fighting under the ideal banner of Christian Democracy (v.), largely led by Fr. Murri (v.) and moderated by Prof. Toniolo (v.), demanded a greater role within the Work of the Congresses. There was no understanding between the two tendencies; so much so that the Seventeenth Congress, held in Rome during the Holy Year 1900 (1–5 September), presided over by Count Carlo Santucci, was of little consequence, and the Eighteenth, held in Taranto in 1901 (2–6 September), presided over by Cav. Giuseppe Giglio Tramonte, met with no better outcome, despite the efforts of G. Toniolo and other far-sighted figures to graft the freshest shoots onto the old trunk of the Work.
A renewal was attempted with Leo XIII’s encyclical *Graves de communi* (January 1901), which, while reaffirming the social directions of lay apostolate, did not yet permit action in the political sphere, thus recalling the most ardent spirits. New statutes (January 1902) and the replacement of the president of the Work followed, with Count Giovanni Grosoli Pironi being designated by general agreement. He was only able to assume the presidency many months later, at the end of 1902. The death of Leo XIII and the election of Pius X postponed the Nineteenth Congress until late autumn, in Bologna (10–13 November 1903), presided over by Count Carlo Zucchini, and it was the last.
The deep division between the currents of the young and the veterans also intensified within the Permanent Committee, so much so that His Holiness Pius X decreed its dissolution by means of a letter from the Secretariat of State to the Italian Ordinaries (30 July 1904), leaving in existence only the second group, the economic works, to which 744 mutual aid societies, 835 rural banks, and about a thousand similar institutions adhered. The following year, Pius X also dissolved the second group, replacing it with the Economic-Social Union. He established the Popular Union on the model of the German *Volksverein*, and the Electoral Union (*Il fermo proposito*, June 1905). Through the work of these national unions, the 20th Italian Catholic Congress was held in Modena (in 1910), the last one, under the presidency of Marquis Filippo Crispolti. For the subsequent activities of Italian Catholics, see AZIONE CATTOLICA ITALIANA; DEMOCRAZIA CRISTIANA.
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A. De Gasperi, *Uomini e tempi che prepararono la «Rerum novarum»*, Milan 1946; G. Anichini, *I cinquanta anni della F.U.C.I.*, Rome 1946, passim; A. Vian, *G. B. Paganuzzi*, Rome 1949; F. Fonzi, *I cattolici transigenti italiani dell’ultimo Ottocento*, in *Convivium*, 6 (1949), pp. 955-72. Guido Anichini