Catholic Italy and Post-Colonial Africa: the New Subjects of an Informal Commitment in the 1960s

The Second Vatican brings to Rome and in Italy, for the first time, a large group of African bishops, expression of a new independent Africa and of its problems. In the wake of Vatican II, the missions are encouraged to rethink their action outside the colonial framework, in which until then had lived, while they are being challenged by crises and conflicts related to the process of decolonization. The Vatican also favors the emergence and the development of lay associations and individual personality, which, with passion and inventiveness, put in place resources and projects, strongly inspired by a wide and renewed vision of the presence of Catholicism in the "new Africa". It appears, thus, a new sensibility, which would have wide repercussions in the development of new political strategies of the Catholic ruling class.