UNIONE POPOLARE. — Association formed among the Catholics of Italy, after the Opera dei Congressi (v.), in order to gather, according to the directives of the encyclical Il fermo proposito (11 June 1906), Catholics of all classes around a single center of doctrine, propaganda, and social organization, following the example of the Volksverein in Germany.
In order to implement the provisions of the aforesaid encyclical, a meeting of representatives of the Italian Catholics convened in Florence, from which the Union originated (1906). Until 1915, the U. p. had the almost exclusive task of assisting Italian Catholic cultural activities. Without a federative structure, it was organized on the basis of individual membership, through a diocesan delegate. From 26 February 1915, by the will of the new pope Benedict XV, it assumed the task of providing the higher direction of Italian Catholic Action, thereby fully taking on the functions that had belonged to the Opera dei Congressi. The Presidency was then transformed into the Giunta direttiva of Italian Catholic Action, to which the Giunte diocesane reported, with the respective representation of all the various Catholic activities; later the Gruppi parrocchiali were added. From Florence the presidential seat was transferred to Padua (1913) and then to Rome (1915). The Giunta direttiva, assisted by a Consiglio generale, had as the executor of its decisions a Ufficio Centrale and in 1913 established a special Segretariato per la difesa dell'insegnamento religioso nelle scuole e la libertà della scuola, whose work was among the principal activities of the U. p., together with the struggle against the obligatory precedence of civil marriage over religious marriage and charitable works during the war (foremost among such works was the Opera nazionale per gli orfani di guerra, established as a legal entity). It held three National Congresses of the Giunte diocesane in Rome (1918, 1919, 1920). It took over Unione elettorale (v.) and the Unione economico-sociale (v.) when these were dissolved (1919), replacing the latter with a Secretariat (1919), supplemented by a Centro nazionale di cultura (1920). The organ of the U. p. was the weekly La settimana sociale, accompanied by the monthly paper L'allarme. To carry out its original and primary task of cultural formation, the U. p. arranged countless conferences and lecture courses; it distributed one-off issues, pamphlets, and books. But its principal and most characteristic institution was the Settimane sociali (v.), the great assemblies of the ruling class of Italian Catholics, the first ten of which were in fact organized by the U. p. The presidents of the U. p. were, in chronological succession: Toniolo Giuseppe (iv.) 1907–1908; Boggiano Antonio, ad interim from 1908 to 1909; Necchi Lodovico (iv.) 1909–12; Dalla Torre Giuseppe (1912), who with the reform of the U. p. subsequently became President of the Giunta direttiva (1912–20); Pietromarchi Bartolomeo (1920–22). Through individual memberships, the U. p. reached 100,000 members, to whom were added, after the reform of Benedict XV (1915), the members of all the other Catholic associations.