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3 Catholic Action, from Rome to San Francisco The action of Catholics, of whatever description it may be, will work with greater effect if all of the various associations, while preserving their individual rights, move together under one primary and directive force. —Pope Leo XIII, “Graves de Communi Re,” 1901 The field of Catholic Action is extremely vast. In itself it does not exclude anything , in any manner, direct or indirect, which pertains to the divine mission of the Church. —Pope Pius X, “Il Fermo Proposito,” 1905 It is not possible for a Catholic to accept the claim that the Church and the Pope must limit themselves to the external practices of religion (such as Mass and the Sacraments). —Pope Pius XI, “Non Abbiamo Bisogno,” 1931 We have a duty to make a contribution of Christian ideals and principles to the nation. —Coadjutor Archbishop John J. Mitty, “Sermon on Catholic Action,” 1932 When Father Albert Bandini insisted that one could support Fascist Italy and still be a good Catholic, he was expressing the mainstream view among the nation’s Catholics during the 1920s. They could justify their position by citing the practice of the Vatican itself, which criticized certain practices of the regime but did not declare the Fascist state incompatible in principle with Catholic natural law theology. Italian Fascism became even more acceptable to American Catholics after the Pope 34 CHAPTER 3 agreed to the Lateran Accords of February 11, 1929. Through this treaty the Vatican acquired sovereignty over its Roman properties, diplomatic relations opened with Italy, Catholicism became the official state religion, Catholic marriages and Catholic school diplomas acquired legal standing, elementary and secondary school students studied religion with books and teachers approved by the church, and Catholic lay organizations, specifically the Vatican’s Catholic Action lay organizations, received state sanction.1 Catholics in the United States, Italian and otherwise, expected the Lateran Accords to open a new era of Catholic influence in Italy. Certainly, this was the view of Father Angelo Andriano, who gave up his parish church and his chaplaincy in the Italian Catholic Federation and returned to Italy four months after Vatican secretary of state Cardinal Pietro Gasparri signed the treaty. Angelo’s brother Sylvester understood the reasons for the decision, but he confided to Archbishop Edward A. Hanna his belief that Angelo was taking “a most ill-advised step.”2 Providence may have decreed that he, with his twenty odd years’ diversified experience in the Catholic life of this country , should play a part in the reflowering of religion in Italy, following the settlement of the Roman question, for the honor of God and his Church? Of course, when I think of the tremendous work that remains to be done among our Italian people here and how well he was doing his share of that work and how few there are to do it, I find it hard to believe that he has not made a mistake. By the mid-1920s Sylvester Andriano was a member of the archbishop’s inner circle of laymen, relied on for his knowledge of and influence in the Italian community. At the same time, the attorney was venturing beyond his work with Catholic and Italian causes into the larger arena of San Francisco municipal politics and public office. In 1925 he joined the executive committee of a local Association Against the Prohibition Amendment, bringing a specifically Catholic social policy viewpoint to the debate when he lectured CATHOLIC ACTION, FROM ROME TO SAN FRANCISCO 35 audiences that such legislation belonged to the sphere of local, not national, control.3 Three years later he joined attorneys Maurice Harrison and Chauncey Tramutolo in a “young men’s Smith club” in support of the nomination of New York governor Alfred E. Smith as the Democratic Party’s candidate in the presidential election of 1928. And in the same year, San Francisco mayor James Rolph Jr. appointed Andriano to a three-year, nine-month term on the city Board of Supervisors, replacing a member who had died in office. Then, in 1931, Andriano’s friend and client Angelo Rossi became the city’s first Italian American mayor, and that summer Rossi sent Andriano to Paris as the city’s representative in a delegation of U.S. mayors to the Paris International Exposition.4 During his trip abroad Andriano visited his brother Angelo. Angelo was now resettled in Turin but was reconsidering his decision to return to Italy, given the Fascist regime’s attack...

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