No CrossRef data available.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 November 2024
This essay analyses the Holy See's engagement in the postwar discourse surrounding displaced minors by focusing on the case of displaced Italian children from Libya. Separated from their families and evacuated to Italy at the onset of the Second World War, they were placed in Italian Youth of the Lictor (Gioventù Italiana del Littorio; GIL) camps. In the aftermath of the war, these displaced children petitioned to return to their families who had remained in territories no longer part of the Italian empire. This article shows how the Papal Aid Committee for Assisting Refugees took part in the relocation efforts and contributed to the conversation on family reunification. By navigating postwar aid and forming unexpected alliances, the Holy See not only contributed to reshaping Italy's geopolitical presence in the Mediterranean but also solidified conservative family norms within the international discussion on humanitarianism.
1 The author would like to express gratitude to the fellows and mentors of the American Academy in Rome for their invaluable feedback on this article. Sorelle Bonetto a Sua Santità Pio XII, Casi particolari-centri di accoglienza. Archivio Apostolico Vaticano (AAV from hereafter), Segreteria di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, Sorelle Bonetto a Sua Santità Pio XII, 7 May 1946, f. 333.
2 The case of the Italian children of Libya is relatively understudied. Francesco Prestopino, I bimbi libici (Rome: Elianto, 2004); Noa Steimatsky, ‘The Cinecittà Refugee Camp (1944–1950),’ Oct. 128 (Spring 2009), 23–50; Rainero, Romain H., Le navi bianche. Profughi e rimpatriati dall'estero e dalle colonie dopo la Seconda guerra mondiale. Una storia italiana dimenticata (1939–1991) (Sedizioni: Mergozzo, 2015), 249–50Google Scholar; Verrastro, Donato, ‘Lontani dal focolare domestico. La Pontificia Commissione Assistenza Profughi nell'Italia del Secondo Dopoguerra,’ in Fuggitivi e rimpatriati. L'Italia dei profughi fra guerra e decolonizzazione, ed. Audenino, Patrizia (Viterbo: Sette città, 2018), 45–57Google Scholar.
3 Chappel, James, Catholic Modern: The Challenge of Totalitarianism and the Remaking of the Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2018), 59–107CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
4 Among the papers on the funding of the organisation, the return of the Italian children of Libya, and more generally of North Africa is always ranked by organisation officials as one of the primary objectives. Atti costitutivi e attività, P.C.A. e P.O.A, Pontificia Opera Assistenza Cenni Storici. AAV, b. 1, f. 11, 2–3.
5 Tara Zahra contextualises this conversation for continental Europe: Zahra, Tara, The Lost Children: Reconstructing Europe's Families After World War II (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 The assistance arm of the Vatican merged with the Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza Reduci in 1945 and became the Pontificia Commissione Assistenza. I will therefore use PCA in the text. In 1953, it took the name Pontificia Opera Assistenza.
7 As opposed to ‘foreign refugees’ (profughi stranieri), a term used in Italian newspapers, which has now commonly been replaced with ‘displaced persons’. For those returning from colonial territories, their assistance was a shared responsibility between the Ministry of the Interior and the Italian Ministry of Africa, which, according to the High Commission for Refugees (Alto commissariato per l'assistenza morale e materiale dei profughi di guerra), generated confusion and inefficiency, creating an opening for the Vatican. For a thorough examination of the conditions of national refugees in postwar Italy see: Ballinger, Pamela, The World Refugees Made: Decolonization and the Foundation of Post-War Italy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020), 43–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Antonio M. Morone, ‘Italiani d'Africa, africani d'Italia: da coloni a profughi,’ Altreitalie 42 (Jan.–June 2011): 20–31; Alessandro Pes, ‘Colonialismo di ritorno: i rimpatriati dalle ex-colonie italiane e la questione del lavoro,’ in Europa in movimento: mobilità e migrazioni tra integrazione europea e decolonizzazione, 1945–1992, eds. Giuliana Laschi, Valeria Deplano and Alessandro Pes (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2018), 171–208.
9 On Facchinetti see: Sabbadin, Filiberto, I frati minori lombardi in Libia: La missione di Tripoli, 1908–1991 (Milan: Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 1991), 65–7Google Scholar.
10 Recent scholarship appraises the number of children returned to the ex-colony with the support of the Holy See at 17,000. This number remains unsubstantiated. Verrastro, Donato, ‘Tra spirito e materia. Assistenza, associazionismo e politiche del lavoro sotto il pontificato di Pio XII (1944–1958),’ Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines 134, no. 2 (2022): 295–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 299.
11 Italy's decolonisation process has often been characterised as relatively unproblematic, lacking clashes like France's war in Algeria. On the decolonisation process as a non-event see: Karen Pinkus, ‘Empty Spaces: Decolonization in Italy,’ in A Place in the Sun: Africa in Italian Colonial Culture from Post-Unification to the Present, ed. Patrizia Palumbo (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 299–320; Christopher Seton-Watson, ‘Italy's Imperial Hangover’, Journal of Contemporary History 15 (1980): 169–79. On the notion of ‘long decolonisation’, which I adopt, see Ballinger, Pamela, ‘Colonial Twilight: Italian Settlers and the Long Decolonization of Libya,’ Journal of Contemporary History 51, no. 4 (Oct. 2016): 813–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Felice Ricci, ‘Pontificia Opera di Assistenza (P.O.A.),’ in La carità cristiana a Roma, eds. Vincenzo Monachino, Mariano da Alatri and Isidoro da Villapadierna (Bologna: Cappelli, 1968), 333–45; Primo Mazzolari, La carità del papa. Pio XII e la ricostruzione dell'Italia (1943–1953) (Milan: Edizioni Paoline, 1991).
13 On Vatican humanitarian diplomacy see: Laura Pettinaroli, ‘The Holy See's Humanitarian Diplomacy towards the Russian World (1914–22),’ in Benedict XV: A Pope in the World of the ‘Useless Slaughter’ (1914–1918), Vol. 2, eds. Alberto Melloni, Giovanni Cavagnini and Giulia Grossi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2020), 1087–1104; Chamedes, Giuliana, ‘The Vatican and the Reshaping of the European International Order After the First World War,’ The Historical Journal 56, no. 14 (Dec. 2013): 955–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Vatican humanitarianism during Pius XII's pontificate see: ‘Religion et humanitaire: renouveau historiographique et chantier des archives Pie XII,’ Nina Valbousquet and Marie Levant, eds., Mélanges de l'Ecole française de Rome – Italie et Méditerranée modernes et contemporaines, 1/1/2023, Issue 134–32.
14 The decision to evacuate the children from Libya was made in May 1940 in a series of letters from the minister for Italian Africa, Attilio Teruzzi, governor-general of Italian Libya, Italo Balbo, and party secretary of the National Fascist Party, Ettore Muti. Rientro bambini dalla Libia, Archivio Storico Diplomatico Ministero Affari Esteri (ASDMAE from hereafter) Gabinetto Archivio Segreto (1925–1942), Ministero Africa Italiana, f. 270.
15 Starting in May 1941, a few of these children were reunited with their mothers and siblings, who had returned to Italy thanks to systematic evacuations from various battle and war zones, organised by the government. This policy was meant to safeguard the vulnerable, specifically women, minors, the elderly and the disabled. Between 1942 and 1943, about 28,000 Italians were repatriated from East Africa. Ertola, Emanuele, ‘Navi bianche. Il rimpatrio dei civili italiani dall'Africa Orientale,’ Passato e Presente 91 (2014): 127–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rainero, Le navi bianche.
16 On the management of the displaced in the aftermath of the Second World War see: Peter Gatrell and Nick Baron, eds., Warlands: Population Resettlement and State Reconstruction in the Soviet-East European Borderlands (1945–1950) (Houndmills: Palgrave, 2009); Cohen, Gerald D., In War's Wake: Europe's Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011)Google Scholar; Nasaw, David, The Last Million: Europe's Displaced Persons from World War to Cold War (New York: Penguin Press, 2020)Google Scholar.
17 People fleeing persecution (as well as those who met other specific criteria) were under the same purview. Relazione sullo schema di integrazione e riforma dello schema al rdl 29 May 1944, Archivio Centrale dello Stato (ACS hereafter) Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri (PCM hereafter), 1944–1947, 1.1.2/10474, n. 37 s.d. [Oct. 1944], 2.
18 The 1951 Geneva Convention on Refugees formalised this distinction, and national refugees came to be seen as not an ‘international problem’ and therefore not something requiring international protection. Guy S. Goodwin-Gill, ‘Different Types of Forced Migration Movements as International and National Problem,’ in The Uprooted: Forced Migration as an Internal Problem in the Post-War Era, ed. Göran Rystad (Lund, Sweden: Lund University Press, 1990), 28.
19 Violi, Roberto P., ‘La Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza nel Sud degli anni Quaranta,’ Giornale di Storia Contemporanea 1 (1999): 58–88Google Scholar.
20 On the papacy's position on colonialism see: Ceci, Lucia, Il papa non deve parlare. Chiesa, fascismo e guerra d'Etiopia (Rome-Bari: Laterza, 2010)Google Scholar; Renato Moro, ‘Il mito dell'impero in Italia fra universalismo cristiano e totalitarismo,’ in Cattolicesimo e totalitarismo. Chiese e culture religiose tra le due guerre mondiali (Italia, Spagna, Francia), eds. Daniele Menozzi and Renato Moro (Brescia: Morcelliana, 2004), 311–71.
21 Camillo Vittorino Facchinetti, Gli italiani colonizzatori della Libia, 1. AAV, Segreteria di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, ff. 441–562, 74. Another copy of the typescript is at ASMAE, Ufficio per gli Affari del soppresso Ministero Africa Italiana, 1 (44), folder 15.
22 Foster, Elizabeth Anne, African Catholic: Decolonization and the Transformation of the Church (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2019)Google Scholar; Miguel A. De La Torre, Decolonizing Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2021).
23 The collection of essays Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity is an example of the disparate responses to postcolonial practices. Elizabeth A. Foster and Udi Greenberg, eds., Decolonization and the Remaking of Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023).
24 Studies on the Catholic Church and the end of the Italian empire have sprung up but they have been regionally or methodologically confined. Jan Nelis, ‘Negotiating the Italian Self: Catholicism and the Demise of Fascism, Racism and Colonialism,’ Italian Studies in Southern Africa 1–2 (2008): 75–101; Roberto Regoli, ‘Pius’ Public Magisterium on the Mediterranean World,’ in The World in a Sea: Catholics and the Mediterranean During the Pontificate of Pius XII, ed. Nicholas Joseph Doublet (Rome: Edizioni Studium, 2023), 30–45; Paolo Valvo, ‘Italian Catholics and the Mediterranean (1945–1948),’ in ibid., 80–106; Alessandro Pes, ‘The Colonial Question Between Ideology and Political Praxis (1946–1949),’ in Colonialism and National Identity, eds. Paolo Bertella Farnetti and Cecilia Novelli (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015), 112–25.
25 Moyn, Samuel, Christian Human Rights (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015)Google Scholar.
26 Pius XII, ‘Christmas Radio Message 1942’: https://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/en/speeches/1942.index.html (accessed on 29 Apr. 2024).
27 Menozzi, Daniele, Chiesa e diritti umani. Legge naturale e modernità politica dalla Rivoluzione francese ai nostri giorni (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2012), 139Google Scholar.
28 Lorenzini, Daniele, Jacques Maritain e i diritti umani. Fra totalitarismo, antisemitismo e democrazia (1936–1951) (Florence: Morcelliana, 2012), 15–23Google Scholar.
29 On GIL, see: Ponzio, Alessio, Shaping the New Man: Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015)Google Scholar; Luca Roveri, ‘Totalitarian Pedagogy and the Italian Youth,’ in The ‘New Man’ in Radical Right Ideology and Practice, 1919–1945, eds. Jorge Dagnino, Matthew Feldman and Paul Stocker (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 19–38.
30 Salvatici, Silvia, Senza casa e senza paese. Profughi europei nel secondo dopoguerra (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2008)Google Scholar; Guido Crainz, Raoul Pupo and Silvia Salvatici, eds., Naufraghi della pace. Il 1945, i profughi e le memorie divise d'Europa (Rome: Donzelli, 2008).
31 Macardle, Dorothy, Children of Europe: A Study of the Children of Liberated Countries; Their War Time Experiences, Their Reactions, and Their Needs, with a Note on Germany (London: Gollancz, 1949), 271Google Scholar.
32 Salvatici, Senza casa e senza paese, 72–80.
33 Though widespread, these depictions often failed to account for the complexity of camp life, which was made up of transfers and relocations, small jobs, training, and educational activities. The diary of Felice Barbieri, one of the children of Italian settlers of Libya who experienced the evacuation of June 1940, depicts the vast array of activities within the camps where he was interned upon the closure of GIL camps. Nicola Labanca, ed., Medico nel Congo, 1901–1904/Virgilio Grossule. Il grande trasloco sulla quarta sponda/Felice Barbieri (Florence, Giunti, 1992).
34 Salvatici, Senza casa e senza paese, 72–80.
35 Relazione di Enzo Minestrino a S.E. il Sottosegretario alla Presidenza del Consiglio sul Campo Profughi Italiano di Cinecittà, 13 June 1947, ACS, PCM, 1944–1947, 1.1.2, 10107, 9.
36 Ibid.
37 Tito Zaniboni, high commissioner for refugees, would stress the importance of rehabilitating refugees. Modifiche al Regio Decreto Legislativo, 29 May 1947, ACS, PCM, 44–47, 1.1.2/10407, n. 137, 2. On the rehabilitation for UNRRA see: Salvatici, Silvia, ‘“Help the People to Help Themselves” UNRRA Relief Workers European Displaced Persons,’ Journal of Refugee Studies 25, no. 3 (2012): 428–51CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
38 Bishop of Padua Carlo Agostini's letter to the Substitute of the Secretariat of State Giovanni Battista Montini, 20 July 1946, AAV, Segreteria di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, Casi particolari, Centri di accoglienza, f. 360.
39 Rapporto di sua Eccellenza Monsignor Camillo Vittorino Facchinetti, 6.000 giovinetti libici, 27 July 1946, AAV, Segreteria di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, Protocollo 139113.
40 ‘Grande dimostrazione di Profughi dalla Libia a Assisi,’ Il nuovo corriere, 12 July 1946, 2. Segreteria di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, Casi particolari, Centri di accoglienza.
41 ‘Grande dimostrazione di Profughi dalla Libia a Assisi,’ Il nuovo Corriere.
42 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Schocken Books, 1951); Benhabib, Seyla, ‘Feminist Theory and Hannah Arendt's Concept of Public Space,’ History of the Human Sciences 6, no. 2 (1993): 97–114CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Birmingham, Peg, Hannah Arendt and Human Rights: The Predicament of Common Responsibility (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
43 Goldstein, Joseph, Freud, Anna and Solnit, Albert J., Beyond the Best Interests of the Child (New York: MacMillan Publishing, 1973)Google Scholar.
44 Bretherton, Inge, ‘The Origins of Attachment Theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth,’ Developmental Psychology 28, no. 5 (1992): 759–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Shapira, Michal, The War Inside: Psychoanalysis, Total War, and the Making of the Democratic Self in Postwar Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 21CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
46 Menozzi, Daniele, ‘Secolarizzazione, cristianità e regno sociale di Cristo,’ Le carte notizie e testi della Fondazione Romolo Murri 2 (1997): 7–18Google Scholar.
47 Chappel, Catholic Modern, 59–107.
48 Insegnamenti pontifici, vol. 1, Il matrimonio, cit., 288–9.
49 The Vatican saw reconstructing families as the solution only when it fit its ecclesiastical vision. The most striking cases diverging from this principle are of Jewish children who had been sheltered from persecution during the war by Catholic families and institutions, and who were now at the centre of fierce custody battles that redefined the Church-state relationship in the aftermath of the war. Poujol, Catherine and Thoinet, Chantal, Les enfants cachés: l'affaire Finaly (1945–1953) (Paris: Éditeurs Berg International, 2006)Google Scholar; David I. Kertzer, and Roberto Benedetti, ‘The Vatican's Role in the Finaly Children's Kidnapping Case,’ Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations 15, no. 1 (2020): 1–21.
50 Zahra, The Lost Children of Europe, 95.
51 Camillo Vittorino Facchinetti, Come mi accadde di diventare ‘questore,’ typescript, AAV, Segreteria di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, 442–82, 1. Facchinetti numbered the pages of the typescript. Here I am therefore using the page number listed by the author. Another copy of the typescript is at ASMAE, Ufficio per gli Affari del soppresso Ministero Africa Italiana, 1 (44), folder 15.
52 Facchinetti, Come mi accadde di diventare ‘questore,’ 3.
53 Tosco, Giorgio, ‘Al crocevia fra Chiesa, Fascismo e colonialismo: il congresso eucaristico di Tripoli (1937),’ Archivio italiano per la storia della pietà 30 (2017): 283–314Google Scholar.
54 The typescript is inspired by a speech Facchinetti delivered on 21 Aug. 1945, at the Circolo Italiano Manifestazioni Artistico Sportive in Tripoli, before the British authorities, in which he hoped ‘that this Libyan land, which has cost us so much blood, so much money, so much work, so many sacrifices, can also return to the motherland.’ Facchinetti, Gli italiani colonizzatori della Libia, 1.
55 ‘Profughi di guerra della Libia,’ 2 Mar. 1945, ACS, PCM, 44–47, b. 3543, fasc. 17.4/30208.
56 Italia ex possedimenti Libia, ‘Ritorno in Tripolitania di profughi colà residenti,’ 14 Nov. 1946, folder 9, ASDMAE AP 1946–1950.
57 Ministero della Marina, Gabinetto Roma, 3 May 1945, Prot. n. B/5455, ACS, PCM, 1944–1947.
58 Ferdinando Baldelli to Giovanni Battista Montini, 22 June 1945, Prot. N. 9520/5, Rimpatrio Bambini libici, AAV, Segr. di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, f. 21.
59 Hallett, Christine E., Nurse Writers of the Great War (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2016), 143–70CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
60 Confidential report on the repatriation of Italian children by Violetta Thurstan, AAV, Segr. di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, ff. 22–27.
61 Profughi libici, Rome, 30 Apr. 1945, Direzione Generale Affari Politici, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Seg. Pol 364/e, AAV, Segr. di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, ff. 14–15.
62 Arthur Hughes to Giovanni Battista Montini, 24 Jan. 1945, AAV, Segr. di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 25, f. 124.
63 Confidential report on the repatriation of Italian children by Violetta Thurstan, 2, AAV, Segr. di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, f. 23.
64 Ryan, Eileen, Religion as Resistance: Negotiating Authority in Italian Libya (New York: Oxford University Press, 2018), 159–64CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
65 Rimpatrio Profughi Tripolitania, Tito Zaniboni to the Headquarter of the ACC, Displaced Persons and Repatriation Subcommittee, 9 Oct. 1944., ACS, PCM, 44–47, 1.1.2/10407.
66 Direzione Generale Affari Politici to Commissione Alleata, Memorandum, 21 Nov. 1945, ASDMAE, Affari Politici, 1946–1950, Italia ex possedimenti Libia, folder 10.
67 P. J. Sandison, ‘Minutes of discussion with Representatives of the Ministero dell'Africa Italiana 16/17 Oct. 1946,’ ASDMAE, Africa, vol. 4, Ufficio per gli Affari del Soppresso Ministero Africa Italiana 1946–1947, folder 1, f. 42.
68 Italia ex possedimenti Libia, b. 9, Rientro in Tripolitania dei profughi, 3–4, ASDMAE AP 1946–1950.
69 Viaggio nave Campidoglio a Tripoli, Resoconto di Alcide De Gasperi alla Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, al ministero del Tesoro, alla Ragioneria Centrale, 20 Aug. 1947, 3, ACS, PCM, 48–50, 12.491.1.
70 Silvia Salvatici, ‘Between National and International Mandates. Displaced Persons and Refugees in Postwar Italy,’ Journal of Contemporary History 49, Special Issue: Refugees and the Nation-State in Europe, 1919–1959, no. 3 (July 2014): 514–36.
71 Giacomo Canepa, ‘Rifare gli italiani. Profughi e progetti per il welfare (1944–47),’ Meridiana 86, Profughi (2016): 66.
72 Giovanni Canaperia, L'Attività dell'Endsi, 27 Feb. 1945, in ACS, PCM, Segreteria particolare Alcide De Gasperi, folder 10.
73 Violi, ‘La Pontificia Commissione di Assistenza nel Sud degli anni Quaranta,’ 63.
74 Otto Faller to Giovanni Battista Montini, 8 Aug. 1945, AAV, Segr. di Stato, Commissione Soccorsi 24, ff. 45–6.
75 Rimpatrio dalla Tripolitania e ritorno in colonia di connazionali colà residenti, letter from the Secretary General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Renato Prunas to the Chief Commissioner of the Allied Control Commission in Italy Ellery W. Stone, 23 Nov. 1945, 11/27798/73, folder 10, ASDMAE, Affari Politici, 1946–1950.
76 Italia ex possedimenti Libia, Direzione Generale Affari Politici to Commissione Alleata, Memorandum, 21 Nov. 1945, folder 10, 2, ASDMAE, Affari Politici, 1946–1950.
