Italian Catholics and the Mediterranean (1945-1958)

While much has been written on the various sides of Italian neo-Atlanticism – from the energy policy conducted by Enrico Mattei’s ENI to the international initiatives promoted in Florence by Mayor La Pira (such as the Mediterranean Colloquia) – not as much attention has been paid to the cultural origins of Christian Democrat Italy’s Mediterranean and Middle Eastern policy, which on the one hand took its cue from the international contingencies of the moment, but on the other was also part of the political, philosophical and theological ideas and intuitions that had innervated the reflection of Italian Catholics in previous years, nourishing an ideal horizon that inspired a peculiar vision of international relations in the Mediterranean area. Trying to reconstruct at least some of the threads of this web of reflections is the aim of this contribution, which reviews the main considerations on the Mediterranean expressed within Italian Catholicism from the immediate post-war period to the end of the pontificate of Pius XII.