L'OSSERVATORE CATTOLICO. - Daily newspaper founded on 2 Jan. 1864 by the Archbishop of Milan Carlo Caccia Dominioni. Its first directors were Msgr. G. Marinoni and Fr. F. Vittadini, and it immediately distinguished itself by its intransigent attachment to the Holy See and by its polemical liveliness both toward its adversaries and toward the Catholics known as "moderates."
Born in the same year as the "Syllabus," the newspaper was wholly shaped by it for thirty years; it enjoyed its greatest fame from 1869 to 1898, when Fr. D. Albertario (v.) held its editorship and polemicized harshly against the liberals, the clerico-moderates and the Rosminians; at that time the newspaper faced prosecutions and in 1898 it was suspended for 4 months by the political authority, while Fr. Albertario was arrested and convicted. With Albertario's death (1902) and the passing of the editorship to Filippo Meda (already a contributor to the newspaper along with Fr. Vercesi, G. Mauri, P. Arcari, G. Molteni and others, who became well-known journalists and politicians), the newspaper, without disavowing its tradition of fidelity to the Holy See, began a new period in its life in which it advocated preparing Catholics for participation in public life, whenever the ecclesiastical authorities should permit it. In 1907 Filippo Meda and Marquis Cornaggia, under the auspices of the Archbishop Cardinal Ferrari, suppressed their respective newspapers (L'O. C. and La Lega Lombarda), giving life to the Unione which, after five years, became the present Milanese Catholic daily, L'Italia.
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Enrico Lucatello