“Genoa for us,” sang Paolo Conte and Bruno Lauzi back in the ‘70s, when the hieratic gaze of Giuseppe Siri reigned over the city of Lanterna, dominated by social unrest, the crisis of State ownership and Red Brigade terrorist violence.
The archbishop of the immobilized city came to be known by his detractors as the Cardinal-Prince. These were the post-Council years, and the diocese was considered the rear guard of the Italian Church - closed in its negative interpretation of the Second Vatican Council, expressed by the pastoral action of the Archbishop and the non-conformist reflections of Renovatio, the periodical born in opposition to the international journals Concilium and Communio.
And yet, between the ‘30s and ‘60s of the previous century, the Genoese Catholic world and the ecclesiastical institution had been the training grounds for an important Catholic ruling class - more so than Lombard, Brescia and Milanese Catholicism.
From the lesson of the Barnabite Fr. Giuseppe Semeria to the pastoral innovations introduced by Archbishop Carlo Dalmazio Minoretti, a generation of young priests became important figures in 20th century Italian religious history, including Fr. Giuseppe Siri, Fr. Giacomo Lercaro, Fr. Franco Costa, and Fr. Emilio Guano, to name a few of the most famous.
The liturgical apostolate founded by Fr. Giacomo Moglia, Catholic training and charity organizations like Catholic Action, FUCI, and the scouting movement, were important parts of youth education programs, as well as male religious congregations (the Jesuits of Arecco, the Vittorio da Feltre Institute of the Barnabites, the Marists of Champagnat, the Salesians of Sampierdarena, the Augustinians of the Consolation, the Dominicans of Santa Maria di Castello, and the Franciscans of Monte Alverno) and female congregations, with the schools of the Sisters of Saint Dorothy and the Sisters of Our Lady of Refuge on Mount Calvary.
This living reality described the cipher of a genuine opposition toward other dioceses, toward secular, Mazzinist, Masonic, and especially Marxist aspects, with the strongest communist party in Italy, and the cradle of National Socialism which instilled a secular spirit among the people of this city characterized by its alleyways, the port, and the industry in Western Liguria (then considered the “Genoese Russia”).
A great period for Catholics who, while not clashing directly with fascism, had prepared a new ruling class during the dictatorship years and after 8 September 1943, brought young intellectuals and politicians into the partisan struggle for liberation and the democracy-building forces.
Such forces included Aldo “Commander Bisagno” Gastaldi - “white” leader of the “red” partisans; Paolo Emilio Taviani; the rectors of the University of Genoa Carlo Ceretti and Achille Pellizzari; professors Michele Federico Sciacca, Alberto Caracciolo, and Fausto Montanari; Vittorio Pertusio, future mayor during the years of economic boom; and the young Dossettian Gianni Baget Bozzo.
The Catholic Church played a decisive role in the fight for freedom in Genoa, through the diplomatic work of Jesuit Archbishop Pietro Boetto, and especially by his vicar and successor, the young Giuseppe Siri.
Then, with the return of democracy and the start of reconstruction during the early years of the Republic, the ideological clash shifted to the anthropological incompatibility between Christian thought and Marxism.
Under Siri, the most faithful and authoritative interpreter of the pontificate of Pius XII, Genoa became the stronghold of the defense of Christianity and the cardinal point of reference for a church closer to tradition than innovation, leading it to its isolation from the rest of the country, particularly after the Council.
The comparison between the two different ecclesiological ideas took different paths to Minoretti’s young priests: Siri in Genoa on the one hand, and on the other, Guano and Costa, who migrated to Rome and became assistants at FUCI and Catholic Action, then bishops at Crema and Livorno, and tenacious innovators at the Council.
In Bologna, adopted city of Genoese Giuseppe Dossetti, Giacomo Lercaro was a bishop who was open to modernity and an important figure in the Second Vatican Council, as moderator and Italian guide for the progressive component.
The defiance of the Genoese church polarized them. On the one hand, there was Siri’s doctrinal compactness, which reduced the innovative reception of the Council, and on the other, minority Christian groups expressing their dissent through social, theological, and political action manifested in the stories of the communities based in the Camillians and Fr. Zerbinati, Nando Fabro, Katy Canevaro, and Nazareno Fabretti’s journal Il Gallo, from the street communities of San Benedetto to the Port of Fr. Andrea Gallo, to the dynamic and unpredictable eclecticism of Gianni Baget Bozzo, who had a relationship of friendship and of very troubled conflict with Cardinal Siri.
At the end of the long “reign” after the brief ferrying of Cardinal Giovanni Canestri, began the ascent of Catholic Genoa, despite the suffering and difficulties of an aging clergy and empty seminaries, the shrinking of Catholic associations, the growth of secular lifestyles distant from any spiritual dimension, with a strong reduction of participation in the Sunday Mass.
On the social plane, the progressive irrelevance of the Catholic component in city politics - the last Christian Democrat mayor in Genoa, was Giancarlo Piombino, a pupil of Paolo Emilio Taviani in the early ‘70s - were signs of an overt decline.
It has taken more than twenty years since the death of Cardinal Siri, in May 1989, to see the return of the centrality of Genoese church hierarchy to its universal dimension, after an unpredictable and covert climb.
The Genoese clergy, accustomed to having an experienced leader, lived through the swift succession of bishops, a springboard to the most prestigious and important positions: Dionigi Tettamanzi (1995-2002), secretary of Ruini’s CEI (Italian Episcopal Conference) and then successor to Carlo Maria Martini at the head of the great diocese of Milan and the Piedmontese Tarcisio Bertone, Salesian bishop of Vercelli and importantly, Secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, close collaborator of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, who appointed him as Secretary of State after the succession to John Paul II.
And while it has increased the polarization between opposites, Father Gallo and Father Baget-Bozzo, and experiences along the lines of the reception of the Council in the life of the city has grown significantly: in the cultural field, the publishing activities of Fr. Antonio Balleto with “Marietti”, in the pastoral field, the evangelical restlessness of Fr. Paolo Farinella, and in the social field, the work of Fr. Piero Sheath in Auxilium Caritas.
And there were other priests, ordained in the ‘60s and ‘70s by Siri, who achieved prestigious appointments and assignments, particularly between the pontificate of John Paul II and Benedict XVI. Other lesser-known names and religious figures who currently serve the Pope, such as Fr. Guido Marini, his secretary, should not be forgotten.
There are four more names that come up in this area: Angelo Bagnasco, Domenico Calcagno, Francesco Moraglia, and Mauro Piacenza, all united by their rise to the episcopate and the cardinalship with prominent assignments in the Roman Curia and the pastoral leadership of important Italian dioceses.
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, was appointed bishop in 1998, and was previously pastor of Pesaro and Urbino. Then the military chaplain was appointed Archbishop of Genoa in September 2006, and after a few months designated successor to Cardinal Camillo Ruini, President of the Italian Conference of Bishops; Archbishop Mauro Piacenza, bishop since 2003, held a number of positions in the Roman Curia: President of the Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage of the Church, then the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, Pro-Prefect and then Prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, and Cardinal since November 2010.
Another Genoese figure who will become a cardinal in the consistory this February, is Mgr. Domenico Calcagno, ordained in 1967, active in the diocese of Genoa for many years, then Bishop of Savona, since last July, appointed by the President of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.
Finally, Monsignor Francis Moraglia, Bishop of La Spezia, about to become cardinal as successor to Angelo Scola as new Patriarch of Venice.
Their appointments and ecclesiastical careers are signs of a turnaround, the revenge of Cardinal Siri in the Italian church, which some interpret with an old antinomian flavor, or in more current aspect of a total rethinking of Second Vatican Council.
A deeper reading could be an ex post facto reinterpretation of a never-appeased aspect of the Italian church - a return to faithfulness to the tradition that consolidated itself in its doctrinal forms through John Paul II.
It had a theological definition with the pontificate of Benedict XVI; the rebirth of a less prophetic and more systematic Catholicism, which has caused the last students of the Cardinal of Genoa to emerge at the top of the Roman Curia and the Italian church.