Principally Articles by Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., and Anonymous Chronicle Items from the College of Writers, with the Deicide Article of Fr. A. M. Vitti, S.J. (1942)
La Civiltà Cattolica‘s adversus Judaeos line reached its most politically charged expression in the years 1938–1942. The period opened with the Italian Racial Laws of September 1938 — which the journal treated with implicit approval — and continued with explicit accusations of deicide and ritual murder published during the Holocaust itself. The dominant named contributor of this period was Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., whose articles on Hungary (July 1938), Zionism (April 1938), and Jewish conversions (1937) provided the theological framework the journal deployed as Mussolini’s regime stripped Italian Jews of their civil rights. The deicide article of Fr. A. M. Vitti, S.J. (March 1942) is the last major adversus Judaeos theological text the journal published before its silence on the fate of the Jews settled in during the war years.
The journal’s anti-Zionism — rooted in the supersessionist formula first stated by Fr. Raffaele Ballerini, S.J., in 1897, and reaffirmed in every anti-Zionist article through the 1930s — acquired new urgency after 1948. Though the Encyclopaedia Judaica notes that “from the 1950s, Civiltà’s century-long antipathy was replaced by a definitely more dispassionate attitude, in conformity with the Vatican’s recent moves toward reconciliation,” this shift was gradual and partial. The journal’s theological anti-Judaism remained substantially intact until Nostra Aetate (October 1965).
A note on the approval process: During the papacy of Pius XII, as in preceding pontificates, all La Civiltà Cattolica articles were reviewed prior to publication by the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. No article could appear without Vatican approval. This is confirmed by Susan Zuccotti (Under His Very Windows, Yale UP, 2000, p. 11) and David Kertzer (Unholy War, Pan, 2003).
A note on sources and translations: All passages marked as translated from Italian are rendered by the compilers of this document from the Italian texts cited in the secondary scholarship listed in the Sources section. Where English translations appear in reliable secondary scholarship (Kertzer, Zuccotti, Valbousquet, the Encyclopaedia Judaica / Jewish Virtual Library, Phayer), these are cited directly with attribution. All article citations preserve the original Italian title, volume number, and fascicle reference as given in scholarly sources.
Part I: The Zionism Articles of Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J. — April 1938
Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “Intorno alla questione del sionismo” (On the Question of Zionism), La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. II, quad. [fascicle of 2 April 1938], pp. 76–82. Documented in: David Kertzer, Unholy War: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (Pan, London, 2003), p. 278; Nina Valbousquet, “Race and Faith: The Catholic Church, Clerical Fascism, and the Shaping of Italian Anti-Semitism and Racism,” Modern Italy, 23.4 (2018), pp. 355–371 (Cambridge Core: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/race-and-faith-the-catholic-church-clerical-fascism-and-the-shaping-of-italian-antisemitism-and-racism/DC30E92A852D34FD46491FCF550D09CF); Giovanni Preziosi, La Vita Italiana, May 1938, p. 657 (describing the article as “a summary of the Jewish question so perfect” that it should repel any “pietism” on the Catholic side).
This article, published three months before Italy announced its racial laws, argued that Zionism could not resolve the Jewish question because Jewish national and religious identity were inseparable — rooted, as Barbera put it, in “Talmudic messianism.” Kertzer (p. 278) records that the article proposed a solution of segregation, calling for “a kind of segregation or discrimination that is appropriate for our time.” Fascist leader Giovanni Preziosi immediately reprinted extensive excerpts in La Vita Italiana, describing it as definitive.
I. Judaism as Nation and Religion — Inseparable by the Talmud
“The unique singularity of Judaism lies in the fact that it is, at the same time and indissolubly, a nation and a religion, still present among Jewish apostates, because of the Talmudic messianism which persists in them.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “Intorno alla questione del sionismo,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. II, pp. 76–82, at p. 76. English translation in Valbousquet, “Race and Faith,” Modern Italy, 23.4 (2018), p. 362, at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/race-and-faith-the-catholic-church-clerical-fascism-and-the-shaping-of-italian-antisemitism-and-racism/DC30E92A852D34FD46491FCF550D09CF.
II. “Their Fatal Craving for Worldwide Financial and Political Domination”
[Their] “corrupt messianism, that is, their fatal craving for worldwide financial and political domination, is the true cause that makes Judaism a front of disorders and a permanent danger for the world.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “Intorno alla questione del sionismo,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. II, pp. 76–82. English translation in David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), p. 278; cross-referenced in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
III. The “Segregation” Solution — Jews to Be Treated as Foreigners
[The solution called for] “a kind of segregation or discrimination that is appropriate for our time; in short, a hospitality and peaceful coexistence, in a manner similar to that employed in the case of foreigners.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “Intorno alla questione del sionismo,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. II, pp. 76–82. English translation in David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), p. 278; Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (Yale UP, 2000), pp. 12–14. Zuccotti notes that the reviewer, having rejected both Zionist and assimilationist solutions, “implicitly leaves the reader with Belloc’s friendly segregation as the only solution — that which Hitler was already doing in Germany, and what Mussolini would introduce in 1938.”
Part II: Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., on the Hungarian Anti-Jewish Laws — July 1938
Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “La questione dei giudei in Ungheria” (The Jewish Question in Hungary), La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. III, pp. 146–153. Fascicle date: 18 July 1938 — three weeks after Mussolini’s racial manifesto and ten weeks before the formal Italian racial laws. Documented in: Nina Valbousquet, “Race and Faith,” Modern Italy, 23.4 (2018), p. 362 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/race-and-faith-the-catholic-church-clerical-fascism-and-the-shaping-of-italian-antisemitism-and-racism/DC30E92A852D34FD46491FCF550D09CF); Ruggero Taradel, “La Santa Sede e le leggi razziali in Italia in Europa” (Issuu: https://issuu.com/rivista.militare1/docs/introduZione_in_le_leggi_antiebraiche_ne/); David Kertzer, Unholy War (2003), pp. 278–279; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica; Cambridge Core, “In the Name of the Cross,” Comparative Studies in Society and History (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/abs/in-the-name-of-the-cross-christianity-and-antisemitic-propaganda-in-nazi-germany-and-fascist-italy/8657603A630FB5D72280709F4DCBFBDB).
This article, published the day after Mussolini announced the Racial Manifesto, praised the anti-Jewish provisions Hungary had enacted in May 1938 as a legitimate Catholic defense against Jewish power. It is the article that Kertzer identifies as “help[ing] prepare the way for acceptance of Italy’s racial laws a month before they were first enacted by praising the similar, recently announced Hungarian anti-Semitic measures.” Michael Phayer (The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965, Indiana UP, 2001, p. 8) cites the journal reference as: Civiltà Cattolica (December 1940):5 for the related Christ-killer material; the Hungarian article itself is cited in full in Valbousquet (2018) and Taradel.
I. Jews “Disastrous for the Religious, Moral, and Social Life” of Hungary
Hungary could be saved from the Jews, who were “disastrous for the religious, moral, and social life of the Hungarian people”, only if the government “forbids [Jewish] foreigners to enter the country.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “La questione dei giudei in Ungheria,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. III, p. 149. English translation in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica” (sourcing Wills, p. 31; Kertzer, pp. 278–279), at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
II. “The Instinctive and Irrepressible Solidarity of Their Nation” — Yearning for World Supremacy
“The instinctive and irrepressible solidarity of their nation around the common cause of their messianic fulfilment, which yearns for world supremacy.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “La questione dei giudei in Ungheria,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. III, p. 150. English translation in Valbousquet, “Race and Faith,” Modern Italy, 23.4 (2018), p. 362, at https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/race-and-faith-the-catholic-church-clerical-fascism-and-the-shaping-of-italian-antisemitism-and-racism/DC30E92A852D34FD46491FCF550D09CF. Cross-referenced in Cambridge Core, “In the Name of the Cross,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 2020 (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/comparative-studies-in-society-and-history/article/abs/in-the-name-of-the-cross-christianity-and-antisemitic-propaganda-in-nazi-germany-and-fascist-italy/8657603A630FB5D72280709F4DCBFBDB).
III. “Not Vulgar, Fanatic Antisemitism” — Catholic Anti-Judaism as “National Defense”
“The antisemitism of Hungarian Catholics is therefore neither vulgar fanatical antisemitism, nor racist antisemitism; it is a movement for the defense of national traditions and of the true liberty and independence of the Magyar people.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “La questione dei giudei in Ungheria,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. III, p. 152. Italian text: “L’antisemitismo dei cattolici ungheresi non è perciò né l’antisemitismo volgare fanatico, né l’antisemitismo razzista, è un movimento di difesa delle tradiZioni naZionali e della vera libertà e indipendenza del popolo magiaro.” Cited in Ruggero Taradel, “La Santa Sede e le leggi razziali” (Issuu: https://issuu.com/rivista.militare1/docs/introduZione_in_le_leggi_antiebraiche_ne/); English translation by the compilers of this document.
IV. Jewish Intellectual Leaders as “Free-Thinkers, Revolutionaries, and Freemasons”
[Among the Jewish intellectual and ruling class in Hungary] “all or almost all are not believers, but free-thinkers, or revolutionaries, or freemasons and organizers of freemasonry: anti-Christians in the intellectual life; capitalists in the economic life, they are then socialists and pro-socialists in social life, maintaining links with socialist unions and their leaders; in a word, their law of life (that is, their practical moral law) is the success of the world by any means.”
— Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “La questione dei giudei in Ungheria,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. III, p. 149. Italian text preserved in: La Civilta’ Cattolica e l’antisemitismo (Italian discussion archive): https://groups.google.com/g/it.cultura.storia.moderato/c/gtk9OHD4RGM/m/MwLhfB2bzx0J. English translation by the compilers of this document.
Part III: The September 1938 Chronicle — Italian Racial Laws and the “Sworn Enemy” of Christian Peoples
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], “Cronaca contemporanea,” La Civiltà Cattolica, anno 89, 1938, vol. III, quad. 2118, 17 September 1938, pp. 557–561 (two-part response). Documented in: David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), pp. 285–287 (journal ref given at p. 326, fn. 42); Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows (Yale UP, 2000), p. 47 (fn. 21 on p. 340); Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Three weeks after the Italian government had marked all foreign Jews for expulsion — with Jews being “harried and terrorised” in Zuccotti’s phrase — La Civiltà Cattolica published a chronicle article defending its own 1890 anti-Jewish tradition and laying out its theological framework for “legitimate defense” against Jewish influence. The article distinguished the Catholic approach from Nazi racism while affirming the substance of the anti-Jewish campaign as necessary and just.
I. The 1890 Campaign Recalled — “Judaic Invasion and Judaic Arrogance”
[The journal’s 1890 campaign was] “inspired by the spectacle of the Judaic invasion and of Judaic arrogance.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], “Cronaca contemporanea,” La Civiltà Cattolica, anno 89, 1938, vol. III, quad. 2118, 17 September 1938, p. 560. English translation in David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), p. 286; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
II. “Legitimate Defense of Christian People” — “Measures to Render Such Peoples Harmless”
[The battle against the Jews] “is to be understood as a struggle inspired solely by the need for legitimate defense of Christian people against a foreign nation in the nations where they live and against the sworn enemy of their well-being. This suggests [the need for] measures to render such peoples harmless.”
(Emphasis on “measures to render such peoples harmless” appears in the original journal article.)
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], “Cronaca contemporanea,” La Civiltà Cattolica, anno 89, 1938, vol. III, quad. 2118, 17 September 1938, p. 561. English translation in David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), pp. 286–287. Zuccotti (Under His Very Windows, 2000, p. 47) notes: “While the editors of La Civiltà Cattolica were implicitly approving anti-Jewish legal measures in Italy, however, they continued to oppose German racism.” Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
III. Freemasonry and Judaism — “Persecuting the Catholic Church”
“Anti-Christian sectarians” who had granted Jews equality had brought together freemasonry and Judaism “in persecuting the Catholic Church and elevating the Jewish race over Christians as much in hidden power as in manifest opulence.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, September 1938, article on freemasonry and Judaism. English translation in Garry Wills, Structures of Deceit: Papal Sin (Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 2000), p. 38; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
IV. Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J. — Jews as Would-Be Corruptors, Catholic Response as “Legitimate Defense”
“Not all Jews are thieves, agitators, deceivers, usurers, freemasons, crooks and corrupters of morals. Everywhere, there is a certain number of them who are not accomplices in the evil actions of the others.”
(This framing — naming the vices as characteristic while exempting the minority — was the formula by which the journal simultaneously endorsed anti-Jewish legal measures and claimed to reject persecution.)
— Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e ‘La Civiltà Cattolica,'” La Civiltà Cattolica, anno 89, 1938, vol. IV, quad. 2119, 1 October 1938, pp. 3–16. English translation in Daniel Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning (Abacus, London, 2003), p. 111, fn. 118; cross-referenced in Kertzer, Unholy War (2003), p. 270, citing D. Mondrone, obituary of Fr. Enrico Rosa, La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. IV, p. 485.
Part IV: Roberto Farinacci’s Testimony — What La Civiltà Cattolica Taught the Fascists
The following passages are drawn from Fascist leader Roberto Farinacci‘s November 1938 lecture in Milan, in which he publicly cited La Civiltà Cattolica as the theological and journalistic precedent for Mussolini’s racial laws. Farinacci’s citations are valuable because they identify specific recent articles and establish what the journal’s contemporary readers understood it to be asserting. All sources for Farinacci’s text are given in Kertzer, Unholy War (2003), pp. 283–285, citing Farinacci, La Chiesa e gli ebrei. Conferenza tenuta il 7 novembre xvii a Milano per l’inauguraZione annuale dello Instituto di cultura fascista (Rome, 1938).
I. “The Judaic Religion Was Profoundly Corrupted”
Farinacci reported that a La Civiltà Cattolica article “which had just been published a few months before” [i.e., in 1938] asserted that “the Judaic religion was profoundly corrupted” and had warned “that Judaism still aims for world domination.”
— Roberto Farinacci, La Chiesa e gli ebrei (Rome, 1938), p. 12. English translation in David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), p. 284; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
II. “Constant Precursors and Masters in the Jewish Question”
“The Fascists had in the Jesuits ‘constant precursors and masters in the Jewish question…and if we can be faulted for anything, it is for not having applied all of their intransigence in our dealing with the Jews.'”
— Roberto Farinacci, La Chiesa e gli ebrei (Rome, 1938). English translation in David Kertzer, Unholy War (Pan, London, 2003), p. 284; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
III. Il Regime Fascista — “Fascism Is Still Far from the Excessive Severity of the People of Civiltà Cattolica“
“Even though we ourselves have never felt such cruelty and hatred…Both for Italy and Germany there is still much to learn from the disciples of Jesus, and we must admit that both in its planning and in its execution, Fascism is still far from the excessive severity of the people of Civiltà Cattolica.”
— Il Regime Fascista (Farinacci’s newspaper), 28 August 1938. English translation in Pinchas Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (Hawthorne Books, New York, 1967), p. 108 (describing the article’s “biting sarcasm”); Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Part V: The Deicide Article — Fr. A. M. Vitti, S.J., “The Actors in the Trial of Jesus” — 1942
Fr. A. M. Vitti, S.J., “Gli attori del processo di Gesù” (The Actors in the Trial of Jesus), La Civiltà Cattolica, 93.1 (1942), pp. 393–398. Documented in: Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001), p. 8, fn. 63 (citing “Civiltà Cattolica [March 1942]:394–397″); Charles Leavitt, “Deicide and the Drama of the Holocaust: Gian Paolo Callegari’s Cristo ha ucciso (1948),” Italian Studies, 77.3 (2022), pp. 298–312 (fn. 66), at https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00751634.2022.2070348; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
This is the article cited by Michael Phayer as evidence that La Civiltà Cattolica “accused the Jews of being ‘Christ Killers’ and being involved with ritual murder as late as 1941 and 1942.” Phayer notes: “The journal continued to publish ‘slander about the Jews even while they were being murdered en masse by German mobile killing squads.'” The article, published during the deportation of the Jews of Western Europe to the death camps, reasserted the traditional deicide charge against the Jewish people as a whole.
I. The Deicide Accusation — “Christ Killers” (1941–1942)
In 1941 and 1942 the journal accused the Jews of being “Christ Killers” and being involved with ritual murder.
— Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001), p. 8, citing “The Great Dilemma,” Civiltà Cattolica (December 1940):5; “The Actors in the Trial of Jesus,” Civiltà Cattolica (March 1942):394–397. Barnes & Noble description at https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-catholic-church-and-the-holocaust-1930-1965-michael-phayer/1100267655; Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
II. Published While Jews Were Murdered in Mass — Phayer’s Verdict
The journal “continued to publish ‘slander about the Jews even while they were being murdered en masse by German mobile killing squads.'”
— Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001), p. 19. Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Part VI: The 1946 Nuremberg Article — Germany “Compelled” to Start the War
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], article on the Nuremberg Trials, La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 97 (1946), issue 2297. Documented in: Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, reproduced at the Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
This article, published in 1946, broke the journal’s wartime silence on the fate of the Jews — but only to contest the legal proceedings against Nazi war criminals.
I. Raising Doubts About Nuremberg — Germany “Compelled” to Set “the Gunpowder on Fire”
The article mentioned “the unprecedented cruelty of the massacres of Jews and Poles” and “the horror of concentration camps, gas and torture chambers,” but did so in the context of raising doubts about “the very principle and objectivity of the Nuremberg trials,” stating — among other things — that “conceding even that, on the diplomatic ground, Germany had been the one to set the gunpowder on fire, historically, they had been compelled to do so.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 97 (1946), issue 2297. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
Part VII: The Encyclopaedia Judaica Summary of the Full Adversus Judaeos Tradition of La Civiltà Cattolica
Emmanuel Beeri, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed., Gale, 2008), pp. 748–749; reproduced at the Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry, written by Emmanuel Beeri and published in 1971 (revised 2007), provides the most concise authoritative summary of the journal’s adversus Judaeos tradition, including its theological anti-Zionism and supersessionism. The entry explicitly addresses the 1936–1937 material (which extends directly into the 1938–1965 period) and the journal’s eventual shift after 1950.
I. The Synagogue “Had Put Man-The-God on the Cross” — The Foundational Deicide Formula
The journal attacked, “above all, the Synagogue which ‘had put Man-The-God on the Cross'” (La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 46 (1895), no. 1, p. 262), “thus bringing about the dispersion of the Jews and causing their ‘irritating’ presence throughout the earth.”
— Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
II. “Have Become the Masters of the World” — 1936
The Jews “have become the masters of the world.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936), nos. 37–38. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
III. “Their Prototype Is the Banker” — 1936
“Their prototype is the banker, and their supreme ideal to turn the world into an incorporated joint-stock company.”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936), nos. 39–40. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
IV. Anti-Zionism — The Theological Question — 1937
Would the Jews, once they had realized the Zionist state, “give up their messianic aspiration to world domination and preponderance, both capitalistic and revolutionary? Besides, what would be the attitude of the Christians when they saw the Holy Places in Jewish hands?”
— Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 88 (1937), no. 2, pp. 418–431. English translation in Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html.
V. From the 1950s — The Transition
“From the 1950s Civiltà’s century-long antipathy was replaced by a definitely more dispassionate attitude, in conformity with the Vatican’s recent moves toward reconciliation.”
— Emmanuel Beeri, Encyclopaedia Judaica, “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry (1971; 2nd ed. 2008), Jewish Virtual Library: https://Jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html. Cross-referenced in Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica,” at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica.
Supplementary: The Four Adversus Judaeos Pillars of La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938–1965
A. Deicide, Supersessionism, and the Providential Dispersion
The charge of deicide — that the Jewish people collectively bore guilt for the Crucifixion, expressed in Matthew 27:25 (“His blood be on us and on our children”) — remained active in the journal throughout the period. The formula, which the Encyclopaedia Judaica identifies as foundational from 1895, continued through Vitti’s 1942 article. Supersessionism made Zionism theologically incoherent: if the dispersion of Israel was providential — the consequence and perpetual sign of the Crucifixion — then the re-gathering of Israel in Palestine was a direct contradiction of divine judgment. This was the argument Ballerini had made in 1897 and Barbera re-enacted in April 1938: that Zionism aimed “to rebuild a Jerusalem that will become the centre of a revived Israelite Kingdom,” which was “contrary to the prediction of Christ himself.” The Encyclopaedia Judaica summarizes the anti-Zionist argument as follows: the Jews “should not be exiled from France for they were a people accursed by God, scattered to the four corners of the earth in order to testify by their ubiquity to the truth of Christianity.” This theological logic remained in force in the journal until Nostra Aetate (1965).
B. Talmudic Messianism as the Motor of Jewish Enmity toward Christians
Barbera’s April 1938 article, citing “Talmudic messianism” as the source of the inseparability of Jewish nationality and religion, continued the journal’s long-running critique of the Talmud as the engine of Jewish enmity toward Christians. Fr. Enrico Rosa had stated in 1922 that according to the Talmudists, “harming [Christians] is a precept of law and a merit of religion.” In 1934, Rosa had affirmed that the notorious German antisemitic Handbuch der Judenfrage contained “un fondo di verità” [a basis of truth] regarding “the Talmud, Jewish Kabbalah, ritual murder and similar other questions.” Barbera’s 1938 formulation — Talmudic messianism as the ground of Jewish “messianic craving for worldwide financial and political domination” — was the same framework dressed in social-Catholic language. Der Stürmer‘s special issue on “Jewish ritual murder” included extensive quotations from La Civiltà Cattolica (Lapide, Three Popes, pp. 81–82).
C. Anti-Zionism on Theological and Political Grounds
The founding anti-Zionist formula, first stated by Ballerini in 1897 — that “the Jewish people must always subsist dispersed and wandering among other peoples” and that re-establishing an Israelite Kingdom was “contrary to the prediction of Christ himself” — governed the journal’s treatment of Zionism and, after 1948, the State of Israel, throughout this period. The 1937 Encyclopaedia Judaica question — whether the Jews would “give up their messianic aspiration to world domination” once the Zionist state was realized — encapsulated the journal’s theological anti-Zionism: a Jewish state was not simply politically inconvenient; it was theologically impossible without simultaneously disowning the charge of deicide, rejecting the Talmudic doctrine of Jewish election over non-Jews, and renouncing the “messianic” drive for world domination. None of these conditions could be met. Barbera’s 1938 articles made explicit what the journal had argued since Ballerini: that Jewish settlement in Palestine threatened Christian holy sites and represented an assertion of Talmudic messianism, not a legitimate national movement.
D. The “Permanent Danger” of Jewish Financial and Political Power
The journal’s 1936–1938 corpus consistently argued that Jews constituted what Barbera called “a permanent danger for the world” by two complementary routes: financial capitalism (“Their prototype is the banker”) and revolutionary socialism/communism (“socialists and pro-socialists in social life, maintaining links with socialist unions”). Fr. Rosa’s 1922 “World Revolution and the Jews” had established the Judeo-Bolshevik framework; the 1936 articles showed Jews as having “become the masters of the world” through finance; Barbera’s 1938 Hungarian article showed the same dual threat operating in Central Europe as the racial laws were about to descend.
Sources
Primary Sources — La Civiltà Cattolica (with archive references)
Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “Intorno alla questione del sionismo,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. II, quad. [2 April 1938], pp. 76–82. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Fr. Mario Barbera, S.J., “La questione dei giudei in Ungheria,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 1938, vol. III, pp. 146–153. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], “Cronaca contemporanea,” La Civiltà Cattolica, anno 89, 1938, vol. III, quad. 2118, 17 September 1938, pp. 557–561; and follow-up by Fr. Enrico Rosa, S.J., “La questione giudaica e ‘La Civiltà Cattolica,'” anno 89, 1938, vol. IV, quad. 2119, 1 October 1938, pp. 3–16. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], article on the Nuremberg Trials, La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 97 (1946), issue 2297. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Fr. A. M. Vitti, S.J., “Gli attori del processo di Gesù,” La Civiltà Cattolica, 93.1 (1942), pp. 393–398. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], “The Great Dilemma,” La Civiltà Cattolica (December 1940):5. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Anonymous [La Civiltà Cattolica College of Writers], series on the Jewish Question, La Civiltà Cattolica, vol. 87 (1936), nos. 37–40; vol. 88 (1937), no. 2, pp. 418–431. HathiTrust catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
Secondary Sources — Books
Michael Phayer, The Catholic Church and the Holocaust, 1930–1965 (Indiana University Press, Bloomington, 2001). The indispensable source for the 1940–1945 period. Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-catholic-church-and-the-holocaust-1930-1965-michael-phayer/1100267655
David I. Kertzer, Unholy War: The Vatican’s Role in the Rise of Modern Anti-Semitism (Knopf, New York, 2001; Pan, London, 2003). Primary English-language source for the 1938 chronicle articles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Popes_Against_the_Jews
Susan Zuccotti, Under His Very Windows: The Vatican and the Holocaust in Italy (Yale University Press, New Haven, 2000). Winner of the 2002 Sybil Halpern Milton Prize. Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/underhisverywind0000zucc
Ruggero Taradel and Barbara Raggi, La segregazione amichevole: “La Civiltà Cattolica” e la questione ebraica 1850–1945, prefazione di Riccardo Di Segni (Editori Riuniti, Rome, 2000). The indispensable Italian monograph.
Garry Wills, Papal Sin: Structures of Deceit (Darton, Longman & Todd, London, 2000). Source for the freemasonry/Judaism passage of September 1938.
Daniel Goldhagen, A Moral Reckoning (Abacus, London, 2003). Source for Rosa’s October 1938 formulation, citing Passelecq and Suchecky, The Hidden Encyclical of Pius XI (Harcourt Brace, 1997), pp. 123–136.
Roberto Farinacci, La Chiesa e gli ebrei. Conferenza tenuta il 7 novembre xvii a Milano per l’inaugurazione annuale dello Instituto di cultura fascista (Rome, 1938). Primary source for Farinacci’s citations of La Civiltà Cattolica.
Pinchas Lapide, Three Popes and the Jews (Hawthorne Books, New York, 1967). Source for the Il Regime Fascista quote.
Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (Harcourt, New York, 1951). Describes La Civiltà Cattolica as “for decades the most outspokenly antisemitic” magazines in the world (p. 102, fn. 44).
Secondary Sources — Articles and Chapters
Nina Valbousquet, “Race and Faith: The Catholic Church, Clerical Fascism, and the Shaping of Italian Anti-Semitism and Racism,” Modern Italy, 23.4 (2018), pp. 355–371. Full text: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-italy/article/race-and-faith-the-catholic-church-clerical-fascism-and-the-shaping-of-italian-antisemitism-and-racism/DC30E92A852D34FD46491FCF550D09CF
Charles Leavitt, “Deicide and the Drama of the Holocaust: Gian Paolo Callegari’s Cristo ha ucciso (1948),” Italian Studies, 77.3 (2022), pp. 298–312. Full text: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00751634.2022.2070348. Source for the Vitti 1942 article citation.
Giovanni Miccoli, “Santa Sede, questione ebraica e antisemitismo fra Otto e Novecento,” in Corrado Vivanti (ed.), Storia d’Italia, Annali 11: Gli ebrei in Italia, vol. II (Einaudi, Turin, 1997), pp. 1369–1574.
Ruggero Taradel, “La Santa Sede e le leggi razziali in Italia in Europa” (Issuu): https://issuu.com/rivista.militare1/docs/introduzione_in_le_leggi_anteebraiche_ne/
Robert Michael, “Theologia Gloriae and Civiltà Cattolica‘s Attitude Toward the Jews,” Encounter, 50.2 (Spring 1989), p. 158. Cited in the Boston College symposium on The Holocaust and the Catholic Church’s Search for Forgiveness: https://www.bc.edu/content/dam/files/research_sites/cjl/texts/cjrelations/resources/articles/bernauer.htm
David I. Kertzer, “The Roman Catholic Church, the Holocaust, and the Demonization of the Jews,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4.3 (2014), pp. 329–333. PMC: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4800995/
Reference Works
Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed., Gale, 2008), “La Civiltà Cattolica” entry, by Emmanuel Beeri. Jewish Virtual Library: https://jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04332.html
Wikipedia, “La Civiltà Cattolica“: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Civilt%C3%A0_Cattolica
HathiTrust Digital Library, La Civiltà Cattolica catalog: https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000674866
See also the companion collection: Selections from La Civiltà Cattolica on the Jewish Question — The 1920–1936 Articles, at https://christtheking.info/catholic-resources-on-the-jewish-question/selections-from-la-civilta-cattolica-on-the-jewish-question-the-1920-1936-articles/