Bishop Scalabrini

Bishop John Baptist Scalabrini (1839–1905) exercised for almost thirty years his episcopal ministry in Piacenza during a period of great social, political and economic transformations affecting Italy and Europe. A symptom of these changes were the sixty million migrants that from 1815, at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and 1930, and not too long

after World War I, left the European countries for distant destinations in other continents.⁴

As a clergyman of the diocese of Como, Bishop Scalabrini taught and was rector of the seminary and later as pastor distinguished himself for pastoral and social action. His catechetical and apologetic writings caused St. John Bosco to present him to Pius IX as a candidate for the episcopate. As Bishop of Piacenza from 1876, he undertook a vast work of reform that extended to the spiritual and cultural formation of the clergy, catechesis, diocesan organization and legislation. He brought to conclusion five pastoral visitations to the 365 parishes of the diocese. It was during the first of these pastoral visitations in 1876–1877, that he discovered that 11% of his faithful had emigrated abroad. He celebrated three diocesan Synods, founded the first Italian catechetical magazine, Il Catechista cattolico, and convened in 1889 the first National Catechetical Congress. To promote popular piety and Christian education, he became a tireless preacher, wrote some sixty pastoral letters, and developed the Catholic press. In addition he carried out a constant work of moderation and mediation among the various currents of his clergy and of the Catholic laity with the aim of strengthening the unity of the Church in a moment of strong conflicts due to the Roman Question and the political and economic upheavals of the newly united Italy. Convinced that the Church must embrace with her action also the social transformations of society, Bishop Scalabrini, besides his better known activities for migrants, promoted a surprising series of social works: organized protection for the rice-pickers (1903), the Institute for the deaf and dumb (1879), and assistance for the victims of earthquakes (1883,1887). He concerned himself with prison inmates, with the poor, and with the sick. He used with effectiveness the press, granting interviews and writing pamphlets on the topic of migration, but also on other burning issues like contemporary politics. The pamphlet Transigenti e Intransigenti (Transigent and Intransigent regarding the temporal power of the Popes), published anonymously in 1885 by order of Leo XIII, had an extraordinary circulation and publicity. It defended freedom of opinion and study, the legitimate autonomy of the local Churches, the role of the bishop as mediator between the Pope and the faithful, and above all the necessity of conciliation between Church and State, to gradually prepare the participation of Catholics in political elections. Scalabrini was

against radical intransigence, considered incapable of resolving the problem of conscience of Italian Catholics torn between loyalty to the Church and to their country after its unification. He opted to work for the general rechristianization of society. He supported, however, the Opera dei Congressi (an association for regular national meetings of Catholics) through which Italian Catholics of intransigent orientation were seeking an active role in social life. Piacenza ranked second in Italy for the number and activities of the parochial committees linked to the Opera dei Congressi. Bishop Scalabrini’s convictions, defended with loyalty and determination before the Pope, did not cloud the sincerity of his obedience. In fact the practice of obedience and of the other virtues, especially of charity, is the reason he was considered a saint when he died in Piacenza on June 1, 1905.⁵ Six months earlier he had concluded a long pastoral visitation to the immigrants in Brazil that paralleled, for the enormous distances covered, the large number of emigrant communities met, the innumerable speeches given, confirmations administered and civil and religious authorities visited, the visit made to the United States in 1901. This direct contact with migrants in their new environment moved him, just a month before his death, to submit to the Holy See the most mature expression of his vision of migrations in the Church, a proposal for their worldwide coordination so that the Church “called by her divine apostolate and by her ancient tradition,” might “give her imprint to this great social movement, whose purpose is the economic resurgence and the fusion of Christian peoples.”⁶