Race, Catholic Charity, and the Cold War in Postwar Italy

The Catholic Church had a paramount role in in postwar Italy.  Especially influential was its presence in the field of assistance to war victims in which Catholic foundations often contended with each other and with lay organizations for the control of the field and limited state funding.  Due to the often unavailable documentation, many aspects of this history are still unknown.  Moreover, some figures of Catholic “charity entrepreneurs” have been studied only by hagiographers who have ignored the more problematic dimensions of Catholic charity.  One of these unknown dimensions is the Church’s attitude towards race, and in particular towards the biracial children born during and right after the war from non-white Allied soldiers and Italian women.  Drawing on some primary sources recently made available, the paper will examine this issue by focusing on an early 1950s conflict between two Catholic foundations, one of which was dissolved by the state under pressure from the Vatican, which considered it linked to the Italian Communist Party.