UNIONE ELETTORALE CATTOLICA ITALIANA. - Organization established after the Opera dei Congressi (v.) on the basis of the encyclical Il fermo proposito (June 11, 1905) and the mitigation of the Non expediti (v.), with the purpose of coordinating and directing Italian Catholic forces in electoral competitions, in which they were called to take an active part.
These aims were illustrated in the first programmatic circular of August 15, 1906, which consequently recommended, through intense propaganda, voter registration among Catholics (1907).
The U.E.C.I., which in 1911 numbered 177 associations and had its own representatives in every diocese, directed not only various administrative elections, but also political ones, where dispensation from voting was granted—while the Non expediti was still in force—in 1906, 1909, and 1913. In the general political elections of 1909, it provided the programmatic points to which permission for Catholics to go to the polls and their vote for candidates had to be subordinated; these programmatic points were refined in the 1913 elections and expanded into seven postulates: this constituted the so-called Gentiloni Pact (v.). Furthermore, in 1912 the U.E.C.I. declared in favor of universal suffrage. Its work achieved remarkable success.
In the 1909 elections, 24 Catholic candidates were elected; in those of 1913, they ran with 35 candidates, determining, by unanimous recognition, the salvation of the nation from subversive forces.
The U.E.C.I. was presided over by Filippo Tolli (1906-10), Ottorino Gentiloni (1910-16), Carlo Santucci (1916-18), and Giorgio Montini (1918-19). When in 1919, leaving Italian Catholics freedom of initiative in the political field, Partito popolare (v.) arose, the U.E.C.I. was dissolved and Unione popolare (v.) the direction of what moral and religious problems required of Catholics.