PAGANUZZI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA. — Lawyer of the Venice bar, Roman count, president of the Opera dei Congressi, born in Venice into a noble family in 1841, died there on 23 June 1923.
From his youth he was active in Catholic Action initiatives, especially in the Società cattolica italiana per la difesa della libertà della Chiesa in Italia, which dated back to 1865.
In 1868 he was elected president of the Circolo della gioventù cattolica named after St Francis de Sales. In agreement with other similar organizations, he was among the organizers of the first Catholic Congress, decided in 1871 and held in Venice from 12 to 16 June 1874, to commemorate the victory of Lepanto. As a lawyer he enjoyed wide and well-deserved fame, especially after his strenuous defence of distinguished clients, and he acquired considerable reputation as a jurist with his treatise on the Right of Nomination to the Patriarchal See of Venice. From a political point of view, P. was a disciplined soldier. He accepted the principle of abstention from political and parliamentary life, and with every effort advocated participation in the administrative struggles in municipalities and provinces, being elected as early as 1881 to the Venice city council and later becoming part of the Catholic-moderate list of Count Grimani. But P.’s fame is chiefly Opera dei Congressi (v.) and Catholic committees, of which he was president from 22 September 1889 to 1902, with exemplary industry and zeal. He adopted the concept of Ludwig Windthorst on general congresses: the great manoeuvres of the army of Catholic Action, which serve to unite, order and direct. Convinced of the excellence of the organization entrusted to him, P., a man of iron will and authoritarian temperament, was almost always reluctant to admit innovations, whether of form or substance, so that many initiatives, even opportune ones, sometimes failed to find a favourable reception from him. Added to this was the mistaken tactics of some young men, eager for conquest, which increased his reluctance, among whom Murri (v.), who was systematically hostile to him. It was this hostility that forced him to resign definitively as president of the Opera and to retire into private life, though his name remained attached to the Catholic organizational forms that followed, such as the Unione popolare entrusted to Giuseppe Toniolo, and even to the Partito popolare italiano, founded later by Fr Luigi Sturzo, to which he adhered, however, to a right-wing faction of the Party.