Abstract
Controversy still swirls around Pope Pius XII’s general silence regarding the Holocaust. Given the Vatican’s ambiguity, the Catholic clergy divided between obedience to the Salò government and support of the partisans. The Church supported the regime against atheistic Communism, the all-important Cardinal Schuster of Milan was hardly a fan of the worst features of Fascism, and the anti-Semite Diego Don Calcagno, editor of the journal Crociata Italica (Italic Crusade), exercised a baleful influence throughout the RSI.
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Notes
- 1.
OO, XXXII: “Stato e Chiesa,” in Corrispondenza Repubblicana 63 (14 July 1944), pp. 380–81.
- 2.
Cited in Malgeri, “La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI,” in La Repubblica Sociale Italiana, p. 315.
- 3.
Ibid., p. 318.
- 4.
Bocca , La Repubblica di Mussolini, p. 226.
- 5.
Cited in Ibid., p. 227.
- 6.
Cited in Claudio Pavone, A Civil War: A History of the Italian Resistance (London & New York: Verso, 2014), pp. 64–65.
- 7.
Malgeri, “La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI,” in La Repubblica Sociale Italiana, p. 331.
- 8.
Moseley, Mussolini, p. 137.
- 9.
Malgeri, “La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI,” in La Repubblica Sociale Italiana, p. 331. Schuster’s letter to Mussolini of 30 October 1944 describes the chaos in his diocese due to the dozens of autonomous squads by denouncing the persecution against priests and churchmen who had been beaten up and maltreated; the anti-clerical campaign of the press, and the impossibility of the schoastic life in the archbishop colleges. ACS, SPD, RSI, carteggio riservato, b. 49, lettera di Schuster a Mussolini del 30 ottobre 1944. The antifascist clergy and top ecclesiastics of the archdioceses were very preoccupied with the fact that the provincial head of Milan prepared a “monthly report on the Clergy” sent directly to Mussolini. These reports can be found in the ACS, SPD, RSI, Carteggio riservato, b. 17.
- 10.
Cited in Malgeri, “La Chiesa di fronte alla RSI,” in La Repubblica Sociale Italiana, p. 331.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Bertoldi , Salò, p. 297.
- 13.
Cited in Bertoldi , Salò, p. 298, who takes the passage from Crociata italica, 29 gennaio 1945.
- 14.
Annarosa Dordoni, “Crociata Italica.” Fascismo e religione nella Repubblica di Salò (gennaio 1944-aprile 1945) (Milan: Sugarco, 1976), p. 99.
- 15.
The details of Don Calcagno can be found in Bertoldi , Salò, pp. 295–305.
- 16.
Bertoldi , Salò, p. 292.
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Burgwyn, H.J. (2018). The RSI and the Italian Catholic World. In: Mussolini and the Salò Republic, 1943–1945. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76189-3_9
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