Catholics and the Italian Revolutionary Left of the 1960s

Radical left-wing Catholics played an important role in Italy's extra-parliamentary revolutionary movement of the 1960s, which took as its starting point the need to fill the void created by the growing moderation of the official Communist party. For guidance in opposing the American-dominated capitalist status quo in Italy, Catholics looked to activist intellectuals, such as the priests Lorenzo Milani at home and Camilo Torres abroad. The vital Catholic component in Lotta Continua, the foremost extraparliamentary left group of the period, illustrates the practical consequences, at their most extreme, of the Catholic-Marxist dialogue in Italy.