Giorgio La Pira: A Catholic Communist by Dr. Carol Byrne

[Stone]

La Pira: A Catholic Communist

Part XI - In 1934, the ‘Mass of the Poor’

by Dr. Carol Byrne

La Pira’s supporters make the breathtaking assertion that he actually instituted a new Mass in 1934. They describe it as a “Mass” specially adapted to the poor of Florence, with the participation of the congregation. Before analyzing this invention (which, as we will see, bears in many respects an uncanny resemblance to the Paul VI’s New Mass of 1969), we will examine the background of the personalities who bore the main responsibility for its creation.

Montini appointed his protégé Don Bensi, left, as La Pira's spiritual director

In the first place, it was through the friendship and support of Msgr. Montini, (1) the future Paul VI, that La Pira brought to fruition his plan to devise the “Mass of the Poor” in 1934. This was the year in which Montini placed La Pira under the tutelage of Don Raffaele Bensi, a parish priest of Florence who is credited with having influenced thousands of young people as chaplain to the youth section of Catholic Action. He was also considered the moving force behind some of the most radical and dissident priests of Florence. (2)

La Pira was already acquainted with Fr. Bensi since 1926, according to a contemporary, Raffaello Torricello, who knew them both very well. (3)

Montini’s choice of a spiritual advisor and collaborator for La Pira was significant. Fr. Bensi presents an interesting profile as an undeniably political priest who attended the socialist-orientated study weeks in Camaldoli inaugurated by Montini in 1934. He also occupied – in contravention of Canon Law which forbids clerics from holding public office – a post in the Ente Comunale di Assistenza, a public welfare organization for the relief of the poor, a position secured for him by La Pira, who was its President.

Fr. Bensi, far left, had great influence over La Pira, right; both are here at a Camaldoli meeting

Fr. Bensi used to host regular meetings at his church for radical activists. Among the topics for discussion were plans to form a mass movement among the poor with a view to changing the social order. It was during one of those meetings that, according to La Pira’s supporters, “it was decided to institute a Sunday Mass” to “unite” the poorest citizens of Florence in their search for social justice.

Who among the group would have the effrontery to institute a new Mass? All that was required was a person of an egomaniacal disposition with sufficient hubris to replace the Mass instituted by Christ with a new creation. La Pira rose to that challenge. At the instigation of Fr. Bensi, who was a close friend of Montini, he created the “Mass of the Poor” in 1934 which was thereafter enacted every Sunday at the church of San Procolo (and later at the Badia Monastery) in Florence. (4)


La Pira: The ‘Mass of the Poor’ is an ‘adventure’

La Pira always regarded his “Mass” as his own “project” and was keen that he should be regarded as its progenitor. He explained its origins:

"It should be said at once that the Holy Mass of the poor in San Procolo and the Badia was rooted in an intense desire for a Christian 'adventure' of faith and charity."

But it was evidently not the faith of the Church to which he was referring, for he admitted that the rationale behind the “adventure” was class-based:

“It was born of the need to render our Christianity less ‘bourgeois’.”

We may well conclude from this statement that La Pira’s motives were rooted in Naturalism and that he created this “Mass” because of his thirst for organizing a social revolution according to his faith in Karl Marx.

This conclusion can also be applied to Fr. Bensi who planted in La Pira’s mind the idea of a new Mass. And behind Fr. Bensi was their “Svengali”, Msgr. Montini, who lured, dominated and manipulated them both, and actually did create a new Mass in 1969.

Svengali is a character in George du Maurier’s novel, Trilby, who seduces, dominates and exploits a young English girl to turn her into a great singer. The word “svengali” has come to mean a person who manipulates or controls another as by some mesmeric or sinister influence.

Above right you can see an illustration of Svengali as a spider in his web from the novel by Georges DuMaurier, 1895. Any visual resemblance to Montini is purely coincidental.


The ‘Mass of the Poor’ prepared the Novus Ordo Mass

La Pira outlined the main features of his “Mass” as follows:

"After the reading of the Gospel a few words were spoken, then, came a few prayers and the Mass ended. A basket of fresh bread was taken up to the Altar. The bread was blessed, everyone joined in an Our Father, and the bread was distributed in an orderly fashion."

La Pira stressed the full participation of the congregation in his “Mass.” (5) We have an eye-witness account by Raffaelo Torricelli, who was a frequent visitor to the San Procolo experiment, that the prayers were led by La Pira and recited in common by the congregation. (6)

What exactly La Pira meant by “blessed” bread is not clear, but he definitely identified the service with the “Eucharist”:

Pietro Parigi promoted La Pira's Mass with drawings to show "the oppression of the people"

"That structure of the Holy Mass at the Badia, understood as a Communion in Christ of all the creatures endowed in their different ways by God, must remain the central idea of our work: because what is the fundamental necessity of our time? What indeed is the core idea of Christianity, the central organic necessity, the idea at the center of community living?

"The Eucharist, which is the core of Christianity, the sacrament of unity; in this we bring together the diversely dressed stones that are destined to be part of a single building."

He also described all the members of the congregation as “communicants” in the “sacrament of love.” But where was the priest in this so-called “Mass”? If there was one, no mention was made of his presence – indeed he would seem redundant in this lay-led service – for Torricelli, who had witnessed the proceedings, was convinced that the real protagonists were La Pira and the crowd of down-and-outs who filled the benches. (7)


The 'Mass of the Poor' as a political rally

In a 1943 article written shortly after his participation in the Camaldoli Conference, La Pira explained at length the thinking behind the original San Procolo project. (8)

Poor people at San Procolo, above, were indoctrinated with communist ideas by La Pira

He spoke of recruiting the poor (reclutare i poveri) in the church of San Procolo with the intention of imbuing them with a collective mentality (si trattave de creare uno stato d’animo religioso 'collective'). He also spoke of turning the whole parish into a revolutionary cell called the Republic of San Procolo (Repubblica di San Procolo) where the poor would be “united” under the leadership of an elite group of intellectuals, artists and professionals.

We know from Torricelli’s account that La Pira gave a speech from the altar on social and political issues that gained the support of the congregation.(9) It was a brazen example of political opportunism, a cynical attempt to take advantage of a vulnerable group of the city’s destitute poor.

It is particularly significant that the “poor” for whom the “Mass” was created were not interested in social revolution; nor did they experience the least desire to be “united” as a class. In fact, they had to be bribed to come to the church in the first place with the promise of free food. (10)

A few years after the inauguration of his “Mass of the Poor” in Florence, La Pira took it to Rome where, under the watchful eye of Mgr. Montini in the Vatican, he set it up in the church of San Girolamo della Carità. (11)


The Condemnation

By instituting a new “Mass,” La Pira and his progressivist zealots - hell-bent on destroying the divine institution of the Church and the priesthood - placed themselves on a par with the heresiarchs of the Pseudo-Reformation who had the same objective in mind.

It is certain that no Pope in the History of the Church before Vatican II would have countenanced the introduction of a Novus Ordo Missae. Indeed, Gregory XVI in Mirari vos, gives the following reason to condemn it:

“Indeed these authors of novelties consider that a ‘foundation may be laid of a new human institution,’ and what St. Cyprian detested may come to pass, that what was a divine thing ‘may become a human church.’” (August 15, 1832)


Continued


1. La Pira first met Msgr. Montini in 1922, and their friendship lasted for the rest of their lives. It is pertinent to recall here that Montini himself had been a pioneer in the liturgical movement from 1925 to 1933 when, as national chaplain to the Italian Catholic University Federation (FUCI), he introduced students to a more “democratic” style of participation in the Mass, which was linked with social action. But even when he was forced to resign his FUCI post in 1933, his subversive work of reforming the Church went on with increased intensity with results that are already history.
2. Chief among these were Fr. Lorenzo Milani and Fr. Ernesto Balducci.
3. Raffaello Torricello, Don Bensi. Con testimazione coordinate da R.T., Edizioni Polistampa Firenze, Florence, 1997, pp. 28-29.
4. The church of the Benedictine Abbey of the Badia, also known as Santa Maria di Firenze, is the oldest monastery in Florence; its foundation dates from the year 978.
5. “La santa Messa viene seguita in modo che tutti vi partecipino con preghiere e con canti” [The Holy Mass is followed in such a way that all participate with prayers and songs] Quoted in Giancarlo Gallici, Scritti Vincenziani, Città Nuova Editrice, 2007 p. 152
6. Raffaello Torricelli, ‘I tempi fiorentinini que hanno segnato la vita de Giorgio La Pira e quella di Firenze’, in Caro Giorgio, Caro Amintore, 25 Anni di Storia nel Carteggio La Pira-Fanfani, Editione Polistampa, Florence, 2003, pp. 10-12
7. R. Torricelli, op. cit., p. 12: “Quale gratia era partecipare a questo settimanale incontro con gli “accattoni” e i miserabili que con La Pira erano i veri protagonisti” [What a grace it was to participate in that weekly meeting with non-Catholics and the poor, who with La Pira were the real stars].
8. Giorgio La Pira, ‘La Messa di San Procolo’ in Rivista dei giovani, 24, no. 9, September 1943, pp. 203-207 quoted in Giancarlo Gallici, , op. cit., p. 150
9. Torricelli recorded that “Questa povera gente...ascoltava, annuiva...” [These poor people...listened, nodded…] ibid.
10. G. Gallici, op. cit., pp. 151-2
11. “La Pira personally established in the church of San Girolamo della Carità the Messa del povero, which he had conceived a few years earlier in Florence.” Giulio Andreotti, ‘Attualita di la Pira’, 30 Giorni, 10, October 2002

[Stone]

La Pira: A Catholic Communist

Part XII - An Agenda Similar to Communism’s

by Dr. Carol Byrne

We can discern three phases in La Pira’s political agenda which correspond with those of the Communist Revolution in Russia:


1. A revolution must take over the existing government

We have seen in previous installments how La Pira was part of Msgr. Montini’s conspiratorial inner circle who were groomed at the Camaldoli Monastery to become a cadre of future political leaders to overthrow the Italian government and achieve complete State control of the economy and labor. Their rationale seemed inspired by Lenin’s vision of a “vanguard party” applied to the situation in Italy.

A meticulous agenda planned under the inspiration of Msgr. Montini, the future Paul VI

As one of those conspirators, La Pira called for a revolution that would be as sudden and as sweeping as that of October 1917 in Russia. Article 86 of the Code of Camaldoli, which he endorsed called for a “profound and rapid transformation in the economy and society.” (1)

La Pira put it this way: “you must change everything in Italy, introduce a planned economy and radically change the country’s political personnel.” (2) All the evidences of La Pira’s life that we have so far presented show that his brand of Catholic Action had a revolutionary programme to eliminate traditional Catholic values and replace them with a universal, secular creed of “human rights” as outlined by Jacques Maritain.


2. A dictatorship over every area of the citizens’ lives

La Pira’s endorsement of the Code of Camaldoli tells us that he favored concentration of all political power in the State, which would be effectively a dictatorship of the hammer and sickle in every field of human action, not just in economic matters. A government based on La Pira’s politics would be as all-embracing and “unifying” as any totalitarian regime. It would require the appointment of apparatchiks to decide who gets what, and, consequently, a vast number of bureaucrats (administrators, regulators and snoopers) to give the State more power over citizens’ lives.

So, Catholics have a right to be shocked at Pope John Paul II’s praise of La Pira’s politics when he said: “To the powerful of the Earth he boldly proclaimed his ideas as a believer and a lover of peace, inviting his listeners to a common effort to promote the fundamental good in various sectors: in society, politics, economics, culture and among religions.” (3)

But La Pira’s method of dealing with the “social problem” was as devious as it was unprincipled. He tried to persuade Catholics that by giving up capitalist enterprises they would be following the Gospel. The reality behind the rhetoric was that he advocated a central bureaucratic distributist system, which would amount to the collapse of economic – and hence political – freedom. As in the Soviet Union and similar Socialist regimes, the system would have to be imposed on the citizenry with an ever larger hammer.

A self-designated 'messiah' to install Communism in Italy

3. A socialist utopia must fool the people

La Pira projected himself as a kind of political messiah using vague utopian platitudes about building bridges of justice and peace spanning the world. He claimed unquestioning support for his self-styled mission to deliver the poor and the workers from capitalist “oppression” into the “promised land” of freedom, equality, justice and peace. That is how he achieved popularity among socialist-minded Catholics who continue to hail him as a “prophet.”


Squaring the Circle

La Pira’s attempts to make an impossible reconciliation between the fundamentally opposing principles of Catholicism and Communism are found in his early writings: La Nostra Vocazione Sociale [Our Social Vocation] published in 1945 and two articles, "L’attesa de la povera gente" [The poor are waiting] and "La difesa de la povera gente" [The defense of the poor], both published in 1950.

The salient point about La Nostra Vocazione Sociale is that it reads like a charter for Liberation Theology: its principal theme of social equality is identified with the message of the Gospel. Giorgio La Pira claimed that the principle of egalitarianism represented not only the inspirational foundation of his new order of society, but, incredibly, the will of Christ. It would supposedly be the “equality revealed by Christ.”

Far from being the embodiment of the Gospel, La Pira’s principles are in complete accord with the Communist Manifesto: There would be full employment, communal ownership of the means of production and equal distribution of wealth for all. (4) In other words, the citizens’ work and wealth should belong to the government and ought to be distributed by the government equally among the citizens. In La Pira’s estimation, everyone should be allocated the minimum of goods (minimo di benessere) considered by the ruling elite to be necessary for life.

Giuseppe Dossetti and La Pira, directors of Cronache Sociali - Social Chronicles - discussing the news

The background to La Pira’s article “The poor are waiting” (5) is revealing. It was first published in 1950 in the Left-wing journal, Cronache Sociali, which was the organ of the Christian Democratic Party led by Giuseppe Dossetti. La Pira was one of Dossetti’s inner circle, and in 1947 co-founded the Cronache Sociali. This journal militated for a planned economy and the end of private property and Capitalism. It is particularly significant that the founders of the Cronache looked to the Soviet Constitution as well as the British Labour Party (6) as models for the Italian government. (7)

La Pira tried to deceive public opinion by presenting the content of his article under the guise of Catholic teaching. He made many references to biblical passages, interpreting them according to his Marxist world-view. He also assured his readers that the Gospel was primarily an “engineering manual” for the construction of a better world.

In his article he proposed a radical transformation of the country’s economic system and a restructuring of the government to ensure his Marxist goals of “full employment” and equality through State bureaucratic control. It is crucially important to understand that by “government,” La Pira meant that elite cadre of “Montini’s men” who had been trained at Camaldoli precisely for this purpose.

In his other article, “The defense of the poor,” also published in the Cronache Sociali, La Pira continued the theme of statism allied to Liberation Theology. He contended that “a Christian should have the same desire to eradicate unemployment and poverty as he has – or should have – to receive Christ into his soul.” These words were taken from a pro-communist Italian priest, Don Luigi Moresco (8) about whom La Pira had written a book promoting his theology. (9) Don Moresco, the parish priest of Saint Apollinaire in Piedicastello, Trent, supported the local communists and socialists and flew the red flag from the bell tower of his church. (10)

It is clear that in his writings La Pira was attempting to syncretise Catholicism with the anti-Christian philosophy of Marxism in order to increase the power of the State, whereas Christianity insists on a relatively minor role of the State so that individuals are set free to help the poor.


Conclusion

Throughout his entire political career, La Pira presented himself falsely as the voice of the Catholic Church. The reality is that, by pursuing socialist goals of equality for all, he transformed Christianity into a this-world ideology and proved himself to be an early exponent of Liberation Theology. He believed that by recasting Marxism in a Christian mold, he could thereby overcome the Church’s opposition to Communism and demonstrate the power of his socialist ideology.

It was a deliberate deception of the unsuspecting and vulnerable faithful, for he must have known that the Marxism he favored in the Code of Camaldoli came straight from the Communist Revolution and underpinned the anti-Catholic regimes of Lenin, Stalin and Khrushchev, and that every State founded on Socialism has ended in tyranny, injustice and economic ruin.

In 2004 a statue of La Pira was inaugurated in Florence; for more pictures and details click here

Unfortunately for us Catholics, there are those in the Vatican - including recent Popes - who not only swallowed this pretence of a “Catholic Communism,” parroting La Pira’s socialist propaganda, but are further misleading the faithful by considering him for canonization. The scandal is that no one in the Vatican spotted that La Pira had stolen the clothing of Christianity and simply co-opted Catholic principles to make them serve communist ends. Or, if they were aware of this, they chose to turn a blind eye.

Yet again – and Dorothy Day is another example – a Catholic Communist is being promoted for canonization without proper scrutiny. We need to be clear on the central issue at stake here. To canonize La Pira would be tantamount to canonizing his political ideology, which comes from the same statist principle of centralized government control as that of Lenin, negates property rights, and subordinates both the Church and the individual to the State.

In 2004, a special statue dedicated to Giorgio La Pira was unveiled in Florence in the presence of Archbishop Giuseppe Betori and the Mayor of the city. The question that ought to be on the lips of all Catholics should be: How in heaven’s name could such honors be granted to someone who had collaborated with the communists during the Cold War when thousands of Catholics had been slain in the name of the very Communism that La Pira wanted to bring to Italy?

Far from deserving a place among the canonized saints of the Catholic Church, La Pira merits a niche in the pantheon of traitors to his Church and country.


1. “Una profonda e rapide trasformazione economica e sociale.” Nico Perrone, Il dissesto programmato: Le partecipazioni statali nel sistema di consenso democristiano, Dedalo, 1991, p. 14.
2. Catholic Herald, 2 September 1955 (See here).
3. Pope John Paul II quoted in Rodolfi Dori, Giorgio La Pira, Profeta di dialogo e di pace, (Preface by Bartolomeo Sorge SJ), Milan: Daughters of St Paul, 2004, back cover.
4. The text of La Nostra Vocazione Sociale makes clear La Pira’s vision of the common good: “Full employment; communal ownership of production; a fair distribution to all: these are the three pillars of the building of the human community [Produzione per opera di tutti; comunità del prodotto; distribuzione proporzionata a tutti: ecco tre pilastri dell'edificio della comunità umana].”
5. This title finds its echo in the recent document, Evangelii gaudium, by Pope Francis who stated that “the poor are still waiting.”
6. The famous Clause IV of the British Labor Party Constitution (1918), drawn up by Sidney Webb of the Fabian Society, made a commitment to Socialism: It called for the nationalization of the means of “production, distribution and exchange.” Influenced by Keynesian economics, the Party favored government intervention in the economy, a “major redistribution of wealth and income”, and a complete welfare State. The Clause was abandoned in 1994.
7. Paolo Pombeni, Il gruppo dossettiano e la fondazione della democrazia italiana (1938-1948), Bologna: Il Mulino, 1979, pp. 227-228.
8. Don Luigi Moresco was the parish priest of Piedicastello, Trent, from 1946 to 1958. Together with Fr. da Fonseca he altered the text of the Secret of Fatima so as to avoid citing Russia by name.
9. Giorgio La Pira, La vita interiore di Don Luigi Moresco, Rome: AVE Press, 1945.
10. Renzo Francescotti, Gente di Quartiere – Storie di vecchi rioni di Trento, Trent: Innocenti Edition, 1980.