ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to address the role of Catholic organizations in the area of social services and local welfare provision. This role represents a form of involvement in the public sphere which has received new impetus in the context of the post-2008 economic crisis. This analysis is conducted comparatively in the four territories considered in this book: the Spanish Basque Country, Emilia-Romagna (Forlì-Cesena), Lombardy (Brescia) and Aquitaine. In these regions, the economic crisis which began in 2008 has seen a redeployment of the social role of the Catholic third sector, thus redefining its relations with the public sector and with social movements, and incidentally revealing its own internal pluralism. Two hypotheses guide the account. First, the increase in job insecurity following the 2008 crisis, which was strongly marked in Italy and, above all, Spain, provided a constrained opportunity for the Catholic social organizations which were appealed to by default. Second, the social field is one of those where Catholic pluralism comes to the fore, between Catholicisms of openness and identity or even, within each organization, between charity and solidarity.
