Gino Moliterno. Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture

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Catholic moral and social principles, most especially in relation to the importance of the

family, the sanctity of human life and solidarity, and the defence of the Church’s interests

in the broadest sense. To this end it provided instruction and training of Catholics as

‘active’ members of society. Essentially a complex of different associations, male and

female, young and old, students and graduates, in 1954 it had a total affiliated

membership of 2,700,000, and it provided a vast network of recreational and sports

facilities. Catholic Action was always a national association, though its effectiveness on

the ground varied according to the strength of the Church in the localities; it was weaker

in the ‘red belt’ and central Italy generally, and in some parishes in the South it was

almost non-existent.

As a result of the reforms of Pius XI in the 1930s, leadership of Catholic Action was

highly centralized in its Rome headquarters, under the direct control of the Vatican. Its

national president, Luigi Gedda, was therefore a power in the land. As the crucial general

elections of April 1948 approached, Gedda set up the ‘Civic Committees’ to mobilize the

Catholic vote on behalf of the Christian Democratic Party (see DC). Catholic Action was

forbidden to directly involve itself in politics by the 1929 Concordat, but in many

parishes it was Catholic Action which effectively operated as the Catholic party, and it

provided the essential training ground for DC cadres over several decades.

Catholic Action went into decline in the 1960s, and by 1970 membership had fallen by

over half. Young people in particular abandoned the organization in droves, some ending

up as militants in the Communist Party or extraparliamentary left-wing ‘groupuscules’, or

even occasionally as members of left-wing terrorist groupings.

Since the 1970s, Catholic Action has held a much lower profile in the Church’s life,

partly because of the increasing autonomy of the Christian Democratic Party and partly

because of the defeat in the divorce referendum of 1974. Nevertheless, it retains a crucial

role as the organ co-ordinating the Church’s activities in Italian civil society. This

centrality may be judged by the standing of just two of its recent national presidents,

Alberto Monticone, historian and now parliamentarian of the Popular Party (see PPI) and

Mario Agnes, editor of the Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano.

See also: Catholic associations; church, state and society; Vatican

Further reading

Poggi, G. (1967) Catholic Action in Italy, Stanford University Press (the classic sociological study

of Catholic Action before Vatican II).

JOHN POLLARD

Catholic associations

The influence of Catholic associationalism has been a major feature of Italian civil

society since the Risorgimento, and its emergence in that period was a sign of the

defensive posture which the Church adopted towards the liberal state. Nevertheless, the

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heyday of Catholic associationalism was undoubtedly the fifteen years following the end

of the Second World War when, by some estimates, as many as 10 out of the 45 million

Italians belonged to one Catholic association or another.

Catholic associations have covered almost the whole gamut of human activity, from

the obviously spiritual, such as the Children of Mary and the more traditional pious,

parish confraternities, to the political and economic spheres, trade unionism, youth

(including a Catholic Boy Scouts group), sport, leisure and culture. The Church has

sought to control them through a direct clerical presence—the so-called ‘ecclesiastical

assistants’ at every level internally—as well as through their affiliation and subordination

to a succession of umbrella organizations—the Opera Dei Congressi, down to 1904; the

economic-social, electoral and popular unioni until 1914, and thereafter through an

intensely centralized Catholic Action organization. Pius XI’s attempt in the 1920s and

1930s to ‘re-Christianize’ Italian society led to the creation of a network of Catholic

associations, most of which survived the fascistization of Italy by Mussolini’s regime.

In the post-Second World War period, it was possible for most Italian Catholics to live

through both childhood and adult life in a series of Catholic associations and

organizations attached to the parish in much the same way as Dutch Catholics did in their

ghetto-like ‘pillar’. The only influences on their lives that were not under direct Catholic

control were the state school system and the electronic media. Furthermore, as the Cold

War intensified, this ghettoization of Catholic life became more pronounced. Apart from

Catholic Action itself, four Catholic associations had the most influence in Italian civil

society: ACLI, the Italian Catholic Workers’ Associations; Coldiretti, the peasant

farmers’ organization; CISL, the Catholic trade union; and CFI, the Catholic women’s

organization. All four worked in unison with Catholic Action and, to a certain extent,

with the Christian Democratic Party (see DC), until the mid-1960s. Lesser but still

influential associations were FUCI (the students’ organization), Movimento Laureati

(Graduates’ Movement) and UCID, the Catholic employers’ and managers’ association.

Catholic associationalism has changed since the crisis and decline of the later 1960s

and the early 1970s. New forms of associationalism, chiefly spiritual and even

charismatic in inspiration, the most notable being the Focolare movement, Communione

e Liberazione and Opus Dei, have emerged to replace or supplement the old. Some four

million people are now estimated to be involved in Catholic associations.

Further reading

Allum, P.A. (1973) Italy: Republic Without Government?, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson (good

on Catholic associations as ‘interest groups’ in Italian politics).

Garelli, F. (1991) Religione e Chiesa in Italia (Religion and Church in Italy), Bologna: Il Mulino

(standard work on the Church’s presence in civil society).

Riccardi, A. (1994) ‘La vita religiosa’ (Religious Life), in P. Ginsborg (ed.), Stato Dell’Italia (State

of Italy), Milan: Mondadori (a more up to date account of Catholic associations and activism).

JOHN POLLARD

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Catholic press and publishing

Whereas in the pre-Fascist period the strength of the Catholic press lay in a network of

daily newspapers, especially in northern and central Italy, today it lies with the popular,

weekly and monthly publications like Famiglia Cristiana (one million readers) and Il

Messaggero di Sant’Antonio (900,000), as well as with a network of diocesan weeklies

having a total readership of about 1,200,000. It is these publications which really

penetrate to the Catholic faithful in town and country. In fact, only L’Eco di Bergamo, Il

cittadino of Lodi (both diocesan controlled) and L’Avvenire (owned by the Italian

Bishops’ Conference) survive as dailies, but with small circulations: L’Osservatore

Romano, the semi-official organ of the Vatican Secretariat of State, has even fewer

regular readers.

There is also a variety of more intellectually ‘heavyweight’ periodical publications

which manifest the extreme complexity and diversity of the Italian Catholic world. The

most notable of these are La Civilità Cattolica, run by the Jesuits and closely supervised

by the Vatican, Jesus (Edizioni Paoline) which deals exclusively with political and

theological issues, Il Regno, published by Dehoniane, and Il Sabato and Trenta Giorni,

both aligned to Communione e Liberazione, the latter edited by Giulio Andreotti. In

1995 a new magazine, Liberal, was born under the joint editorship of two ‘lay’

intellectuals, Ernesto Galli Della Loggia and Ferdinando Adornato, and the Catholic

historian Giorgio Rumi as a meeting point between liberal conservatives of both a

Catholic and a secular stamp. In addition, there is an independent Catholic news agency,

Adista, based in Rome, which publishes news of Catholic ‘dissidence’ of all kinds, all

over the world.

There are over one hundred avowedly ‘Catholic’ publishing houses, large and small,

the most important of which are Ancora and AVE (Rome), Dehoniane and the Edizioni

Paoline (Bologna), Editrice La Scuola and Editrice Morcelliania (Brescia), Edizioni

Piemme (Turin), Jaca Books (Milan), and Libreria Editrice Vaticana and Vita e Pensiero,

the press of the Catholic University of Milan. In the last two years, a number of Catholic

publishers have begun to move out of the restricted network of Catholic bookshops,

seeking a wider readership for their books.

While the bulk of the Catholic press and publishing sector is directly or indirectly

under the control of the Church authorities or religious orders, the presence of a strong

lay element testifies to the continuing vitality of Italian Catholicism.

See also: Catholic associations; church, state and society; the Vatican

Further reading

Riccardi, A. (1994) ‘La vita religiosa’, in P. Ginsborg (ed.), Stato dell’Italia (The State of Italy),

Milan: Bruno Mondadori (includes a full list of publications and publishing houses).

JOHN POLLARD

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Cavalli, Patrizia

b. 1947, Todi, Perugia

Poet, novelist and translator

Proficient as a translator as well as poet, Cavalli has contributed to many literary

magazines and her poetry has appeared in prestigious journals such as Paragone, Linea

d’ombra and Nuovi Argomenti. Her strikingly individualistic style, betraying in places the

influence of Sandro Penna, struggles to render the passions of both the human body and

the soul, although beneath the pulsing rhythm of her compositions there seems to lie a

profound disenchantment and discontent with the human condition. Her most important

poems are in the collections Le mie poesie non cambieranno il mondo (My Poetry Will

not Change the World) (1981) and Il Cielo (The Sky) (1981). She has also published a

short novel, Ritratto (Portrait) (1992).

ANDREA RICCI

Cavani, Liliana

b. 1 January 1933, Carpi, Modena

Film director

One of the very few Italian female directors to have achieved international renown,

Cavani has constantly offered new points of view on controversial historical figures and

on the extremes of human behaviour. It is this search for hidden truths, combined with a

refined style and a disregard for social conventions, that makes Cavani’s body of work

one of the most daring in Italian cinema. Although she had already directed a number of

interesting films in the 1960s (Francesco d’Assisi, 1966; Galileo, 1968; I cannibali (The

Cannibals), 1969) she first came to international attention in 1974 with Il portiere di notte

(The Night Porter) followed by Al di là del bene e del male (Beyond Good and Evil)

(1977), a film about the strange ménage à trois between the proto-feminist Lou Salomé,

the poet Paul Rée and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. Amongst her numerous

subsequent films is also a striking adaptation of Curzio Malaparte’s novel La pelle (The

Skin) (1981), starring Burt Lancaster and Marcello Mastroianni. Although her

frequently confrontational films are not universally liked, Cavani has undoubtedly made

important contributions to Italian cultural and political debate. In 1996 she served as

council member of RAI.

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Further reading

Tiso, C. (1975) Liliana Cavani, Florence: La Nuova Italia (a general survey of Cavani’s work to

the mid-1970s).

ADRIANA MONTI

CCD

The CCD (Centre Cristiano Democratico, or Democratic Christian Centre) was born out

of the split which followed the attempt to re-found the Christian Democratic Party (see

DC) in January 1994. A group of centre-right DC parliamentarians led by Casini,

Fumagalli, D’Onofrio and Mastella founded the CCD and joined forces with

Berlusconi’s Polo della Liberià in order to preserve a Catholic political presence under

the new electoral regime. They won 6 per cent of the proportional representation vote in

the 1994 elections, and established an influential presence in the ensuing Berlusconi

government through ministers like D’Onofrio, who took the prestigious justice ministry.

Though they stayed loyal to Berlusconi following the collapse of his government in

December 1994, they did less well in the elections of 1996.

Further reading

Fontana, S. (1995) Il destino politico dei cattolici (The Political Destiny of the Catholics), Milan:

Arnaldo Mondadori.

Wertman, D. (1995) ‘The Last Year of the Christian Democratic Party’, in C. Mershon and G.

Pasquino (eds), Italy: Ending the First Republic, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

JOHN POLLARD

CDU

The CDU (Cristiani Democratici Uniti, or United Democratic Christians) was formed by

Rocco Buttiglione during the March 1995 split in the Popular Party (see PPI) provoked

by the debate over future electoral alliances, specifically as to whether to join the PDS

and Progressives or Berlusconi’s Polo della Liberià, which Buttiglione preferred.

Buttiglione, a philosophy professor who has been a counsellor of Pope John Paul II,

ensured that the CDU retained close links with Communione e Liberazione: in fact,

Roberto Formigoni, one of the leading lights of the latter, is also CDU president of the

Lombard regional government.

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In alliance with Berlusconi’s Polo, the CDU won seats in the Senate and Chamber of

Deputies in the 1996 elections. It subsequently worked closely with the CCD and there

was much talk of reconstructing the old Christian democratic party around them, perhaps

even of reunification with the PPI, but this did not happen. However, following the fall of

the Prodi government in 1998, the CDU merged with the newly formed UDR, which

became part of D’Alema’s centre-left government.

JOHN POLLARD

Cecchi, Carlo

b. 25 January 1939, Florence

Theatre director and actor

Cecchi’s acting is characterized by the use of Neapolitan dialectal cadences acquired

during his youthful apprenticeship with Eduardo De Filippo. His friendship with Elsa

Morante and an encounter with the Living Theatre which pushed him in the direction of

alternative performance were also perhaps influential in his vaunted autonomy from the

system of stabili or established public theatres. His repertoire includes both classic and

modern works, amongst them Majakovski whose The Bath (1971) and The Flea (1975)

were presented in an expressionist style; Büchner’s Woyzech (1969), where the

protagonist spoke in Calabrian dialect; Pirandello’s L’Uomo, la bestia e la virtù (Man,

Beast and Virtue), produced in 1978 with animal masks; and other plays by Molière,

Pinter and Bernhardt. The directorial approach alternates with singular efficacy between

popular tradition and Brechtian alienation, and there is an unusual rigour in the guidance

of the actors with an almost maniacal attention to gesture and pauses. More recently

Cecchi has achieved a greater popularity due to his fascinating roles in the films of Mario

Martone.

PAOLO PUPPA

Cecchi, Emilio

b. 17 July 1884, Florence; d. 5 September 1966, Rome

Journalist, critic and translator

Amongst the most prolific and influential Italian intellectuals of the twentieth century,

Cecchi contributed to influential journals and newspapers (Il Leonardo, La Voce, La

Critica, Il Corriere della sera among others) and was a founding member of the literary

journal La Ronda (1919–23), which after Futurism’s artistic iconoclasm, urged writers to

return to a classical style modelled on Leopardi and Manzoni. His prose collections

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during this period exemplify his lyrical, yet ironic, narrative style characterized as prosa

d’arte (artistic prose).

While continuing a journalistic career, Cecchi also taught Italian literature and culture

at the University of California, Berkeley (1930–1), collaborated with the Italian film

company Cines (1932–58) and co-edited a nine-volume history of Italian literature with

Dante scholar Natalino Sapegno. Never having completed his university studies, Cecchi

was nevertheless awarded an honorary degree in Letters in 1958. His interests ranged

from English and American literatures to twentieth-century Italian poetry and prose, and

included American culture, which he described in his travel books, particularly in

Messico (Mexico) (1932) and America amara (Bitter America) (1932).

FRANCESCA PARMEGGIANI

Cecchi D’Amico, Suso (Giovanna)

b. 21 July 1914, Rome

Scriptwriter

One of the most respected and prolific scriptwriters in postwar Italian cinema, Cecchi

D’Amico has worked with all the major directors including Antonioni, Bolognini,

Blasetti, Comencini, Monicelli, Rosi, Zeffirelli and De Sica, for whom she co-wrote

Ladri di biciclette (Bicycle Thieves) (1948). Her most constant collaboration, however,

was with Visconti and she was scriptwriter for all his most famous films including Senso

(1953), Rocco e i suoi fratelli (Rocco and His Brothers) (1960), Il gattopardo (The

Leopard) (1962) and Morte a Venezia (Death in Venice) (1970). She has received

numerous awards times and an honorary degree in letters from the including the Nastro

d’Argento (Silver Ribbon) six University of Bari, as well as being made Commander and

Grand Officer of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. Her enormous contribution to

Italian cinema was officially recognized with a Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at

the Venice International Film Festival in 1994.

Further reading

Cecchi D’Amico, S. (1996) ‘Writing Rocco and his Brothers’, in J. Boorman and W. Donohue

(eds), Projections 6: Filmmakers on Filmmaking, London: Faber & Faber (an extended

interview in which the scriptwriter discusses her work with Visconti).

GINO MOLITERNO

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Cederna, Camilla

b. 21 January 1911, Milan; d. 9 November 1997, Rome

Writer and editor

Cederna, whose writings span the mid-1940s to the 1990s, began her career as a

journalist. She was among the founders of the weekly L’Europeo, and later contributed

regularly to other news and cultural magazines such as L’Espresso and Panorama. In her

many books she depicted all the major aspects and personalities of Italian society, from

the Milanese upper classes in Noi siamo le signore (We are The Ladies) (1958) to Fellini

in La voce dei padroni (The Voice of the Bosses) (1962). In subsequent publications such

as Pinelli: Una finestra sulla strage (Pinelli: A Window on the Carnage) (1971) and

Sparare a vista. Come la polizia del regime DC mantiene l’ordine pubblico (Shooting on

Sight: How the Police of the Christian Democratic Government Maintains Public Order)

(1975), she publicly accused the government of political oppression and of backing

police violence. With her ironic and spirited writing style, Cederna captured the changing

trends, the tragedies and the comedies of Italian society over a period of five decades.

PIERA CARROLI

Cefis, Eugenio

b. 21 July, 1921, Cividale, Friuli

Industrial manager

Originally a member of Enrico Mattei’s team at ENI, Cefis succeeded Mattei as

chairman of the group and, with remarkable business acumen, successfully steered the

state-owned oil company through the 1960s and early 1970s, a most difficult period for

the world oil market. Drawing upon strong support from his political patrons within the

DC, he made ENI an outstanding power in the Italian economy. He nevertheless

preferred to rule rather than be ruled, and so pressed ENI to acquire control over

Montedison, a leading chemical company, attempting to transform it into his own

independent realm. A silent, enigmatic figure, Cefis’s outstanding managerial skill was

overshadowed by his fame as an unscrupulous adventurer who systematically bribed

parties and used his public office to carry on his personal business. As the emblem of an

entire generation of rapacious public managers, Cefis is reputedly the model for one of

the main characters in Petrolio (Oil), the last, unfinished novel of Pier Paolo Pasolini.

STEFANO BATTILOSSI

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Celant, Germano

b. 1940, Genoa

art critic and curator

Celant studied Futurism at the University of Puerto Rico, so it is perhaps not surprising

that he believes in a strong relationship between critic, manifesto and art movement. In

1967 he coined the term arte povera for an exhibition he was curating, and promoted the

group with a manifesto in Flash Art. He also wrote for Forma Nuova, Casabella and

Marcatrè, and taught at the University of Genoa. His many publications include lavishly

illustrated catalogues for shows he has curated on individual artists such as Mario Merz,

Claes Oldenburg and Robert Mapplethorpe. In 1994–5, as Curator of Contemporary Art

at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, he organized the major exhibition ‘The Italian

Metamorphosis: 1943–1968.’ Celant’s signature catalogue essay is non-factual, a stream

of consciousness exploration of an extended metaphor, at times with a classical flavour.

In 1997 he returned to Italy as the director of a wilfully eclectic Venice Biennale. He

remains enormously influential.

Further reading

Celant, G. (1994) The Italian Metamorphosis: 1943–1968, New York: Guggenheim Museum.

MAX STAPLES

Celati, Gianni

b. 10 January 1937, Sondrio

Novelist, translator and academic

During the 1960s Celati was an active member of the avantgarde movement (see Gruppo

63) and his writings, especially earlier works such as Comiche (Comics) (1971), Le

avventure di Guizzardi (The Adventures of Guizzardi) (1973) and Lunario del paradiso

(Moonscape of Paradise) (1978), subvert and renegotiate traditional notions of literature

and its function in society by jettisoning the elitist distinction between ‘high’ and

‘popular’ culture and adopting instead a style which is an intriguing amalgam of popular

jargon and everyday language. The iconoclastic stance taken in the 1970s gives way to a

more relaxed prose in his subsequent narratives from Narratori delle pianure (Voices

from the Plains) (1985) to Quattro novelle sulle apparent (Appearances) (1987). Here

Celati’s writing is dominated more by the theme of wandering and the observation of

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nature and human reaction to it. Celati, who teaches American literature at the University

of Bologna, has also translated works by Swift, Twain, Céline, London and Melville.

PAOLO BARTOLONI

Celentano, Adriano

b. 6 January 1938, Milan

Singer, actor and film director

Italy’s most famous and most enduring rock’n’roll singer, Celentano was born in Milan

of southern parents. While working at various jobs, including as a plumber and a

watchmaker, he began doing imitations of Jerry Lewis and Bill Haley at the Santa Tecla

Club. In May 1957, backed by the Rock Boys—a group that included, amongst others,

Giorgio Gaber and Enzo Jannacci—he sang at the first National Festival of Rock’n’Roll

at the Palazzo di Ghiaccio (Ice Palace) in Milan. He proved to be an overwhelming

success and was immediately offered a recording contract. His singing career on the

rise—and by now becoming notorious as ‘il molleggiato’ (the sprung one) because of the

way he moved his body—he performed at the second Italian National Rock’n’Roll

Festival in 1958 and was soon also appearing in films, including being featured in a

segment of Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960). In 1961 he was inducted into military service

but was nevertheless able to continue his singing career, competing in the Sanremo

festival that year to perform his now legendary ‘24,000 baci’ (24,000 Kisses). He

scandalized the judges by turning his back on the audience and so failed to win, but his

song immediately leapt to the top of the hit parade and sold over a million copies, making

him the most popular rock’n’roll artist in Italy.

In the following years, having founded his own recording company, the Clan

Celentano, he continued to produce a long string of hits in Italy, and performed in rock

festivals abroad, thereby acquiring an international reputation. By the mid-1970s, having

already appeared in films by Lattuada and Dario Argento, he also began writing,

directing and acting in several of his own films. During the next decade, as well as

touring intensely both in Italy and abroad, he also appeared in over fifteen films as well

as directing himself in Joan Lui (1985), a film in which he played Jesus Christ returning

to the earth for the second time.

In 1987 he was invited to host a season of the RAI’s long-running and extremely

popular Saturday evening variety programme Fantastico (see Canzonissima) where he

caused a furore (as well as increasing the ratings) with his assorted, improvised and often

contradictory opinions on everything from consumerism and television advertising to

hunting and environmental issues.

Regarded as something of a dinosaur by the younger generation in the 1990s, he

nevertheless manages to maintain considerable popularity amongst a more mature

audience by regularly releasing new albums, the most recent being a CD recorded in

collaboration with another classic rock star, Mina, and an album of new songs written

with the lyricist Mogol (see Lucio Battisti) in 1999.

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