Luigi Sturzo

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Popular Party, Italy (Partito Popolare Italiano, PPI) A political party with Roman Catholic support, it emerged once the Pope rescinded the ban on Italian Catholics participating fully in the secular Italian state. Founded by the Sicilian priest Luigi Sturzo (b. 1871, d. 1959) on 18 January 1919, the party stood for decentralization, constitutional reform including women's suffrage and proportional representation, corporatism, and social legislation. In the 1919 parliamentary elections, it won 100 out of 508 seats. Despite its relative strength, the party was unable to resist the rise of the Fascist movement. It suffered from its own disunity (some members on the right actually supported Mussolini), as well as from its ideological aversion to socialism, which made it impossible for it to unite with the Socialist and Communist Parties to form a Popular Front. In addition, a Vatican eager to come to an accommodation with Mussolini (Lateran Treaties) exerted pressure on the PPI not to be too hostile towards the Fascists, and in July 1923 forced Sturzo to resign and go into exile (October 1924).

Under De Gasperi, however, the party continued its independent stance against the Fascists and took part in the Aventine Secession. The party was outlawed in 1926, but many of its leaders became active in the foundation of the Christian Democratic Party (DC) in 1943, although the new party was rejected by Sturzo himself.

The name Partito Popolare Italiano was also used by a successor party to the Christian Democrats from 1994. It was part of the Olive Tree coalition in 1996, and in 2001 it moved into opposition as part of the Daisy (Margherita) Alliance.

http://www.popolari.it

Luigi Sturzo , 1871–1959, Italian priest and political leader. He taught philosophy and sociology at a seminary in his native Sicily. In 1919 he founded the Popular (Roman Catholic) party and became its political secretary. In the elections of Nov., 1919, the new party secured about one fifth of the seats in parliament and became an important force in Italian politics. After the rise of Fascism Sturzo was forced to live in exile, first in England and later in the United States; his party was officially banned. It was revived, however, after Benito Mussolini's downfall and renamed the Christian Democratic party. Sturzo returned to Italy after World War II and in 1952 was made a senator for life.