ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the role of the Catholic Church in the debate on immigration and Italian national identity. While remaining the most authoritative voice raised against the often racist policies put forward by right-wing parties to deal with the phenomenon, since 2000 the Church has moved towards a new position on immigration, mostly unknown to the public and often neglected by the media. This chapter will try to show how this debate has been exploited by the Catholic hierarchy, to remark on the Church’s need for a stronger feeling of national belonging strictly linked with Italy’s ‘Catholic origins’ as well as to reassert the superiority of Christian values vis-à-vis alternative ideas of the ‘good life’ and a much-feared growing relativism. It will argue that the Church is putting forward an original model of identity and citizenship based on a ‘selective solidarity’, while seeming to aspire to the construction of a quasi-theocratic state where the concepts of religious and national belonging coincide.
