Among pastoral needs and commitment to the preservation of national identity: the Holy See and the Italian emigration abroad among the nineteenth and twentieth centuries

On the basis of a plurality of archival and print sources, the A. explores the role played by the Holy See in matters of assistance and pastoral care of the Italian emigrants abroad in the period from the second half of the nineteenth century, until the Second Vatican Council and the post-conciliar season. The A. documents how, at least until the second half of the eighties of the nineteenth century, the actions promoted by the Italian Church for the protection of emigrants were very limited and, on the whole, with an episodic and marginal character. The situation changed significantly over Leo XIII’s and Pius X’s pontificates. The latter, in particular, undertook actions not only in terms of the intensification of the initiatives and works of assistance and for the centralization of policies in support of the migrants’ pastoral care, but also on that – equally crucial – of the recruitment and the cultural and spiritual education of the clergy intended to animate the religious life of the communities of Italian emigrants abroad. The commitment in favor of the refugees and prisoners of war exercised by the Holy See during the Second World War helped to develop within the Church a wider sensitivity so that the focus gradually shifted from the problem of the Italian emigration to that, more comprehensive and universal, of all those who, not only for economic reasons but also for reasons related to conflicts, natural disasters and persecution, were – and still are – forced to leave their places of origin and live away from their country (refugees, prisoners of war ecc.)