Address by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella at the 50th Social Week of Catholics

Courtesy translation

Allow me to address a very cordial greeting to the President of the Bishops’ Conference, to all the bishops present, to the Apostolic Nuncio; to the local Authorities of this magnificent part of Italy: the President of the Region, the Mayor of the city and all the other mayors attending; and to you all, thanking you for the invitation and, above all, for what the Social Weeks do.

Democracy.

It is a word of common usage, also in its adjectival form.

It is widely used. It denotes a value.

The dictatorships of the 20^th century identified it as an enemy to be defeated.

Free individuals have turned it into their emblem.

It is at once an achievement and a hope that is at times unscrupulously demeaned by using it as a label to partisan theories.

There is no debate in which it is not invoked to support one’s own position.

It is a fabric that the enemies of democracy claim to be threadbare.

The interpretation made of this basic groundwork of our lives sometimes appears to be instrumental and not sufficiently considered as the basis for mutual respect.

We have reached the point of asserting that values such as freedom and democracy are opposable, with the latter artfully used as a limitation to the former.

So, it is not inappropriate to question ourselves on the existence of a soul of democracy, and what it may be.

Or is it simply a method?

From where does it draw inspiration?

What makes it the backbone that supports the body of our Institutions and the civil life of our community?

It is a question that has accompanied – in the past and in the present – the progress of Italy and of Europe.

Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that a soulless democracy is destined to implode, not because of formal aspects of course but because of the loss of value content.

In his address to the first edition of the Biennale Democrazia in 2009, the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, focused on the construction of our republican democracy through the acquisition of principles that, since then, have placed our Country in the wake of the Western liberal democratic thought .

After the obsessive “constraints” of the fascist regime, an “air of freedom” started to sweep through the Constitution, designed to protect the rights of the citizens.

The “air of freedom” firstly intended as the refusal of any obligation to surrender to social or political conformism, and as the right to opposition.

In other words, democracy is not fulfilled in its functioning norms, obviously with no prejudice to the absolute necessity to define and play according to the “rules of the game”.

Because, as Norberto Bobbio recalled, the minimum conditions of democracy are always demanding: a universal and equal right to vote, the freedom of vote, alternative options, the insuppressible role of electoral assemblies and, last but not least, the limitations to the decisions of the majority, meaning thereby that they cannot violate the rights of minorities and hinder them from in turn becoming the majority.

It is the exercise of democracy that brings it to life, making it concrete, transparent and captivating.

What are the reasons for my referring to the “air of freedom” when speaking about democracy?

There is no democracy without the protection of the fundamental rights to freedom, which represent what gives meaning to the Rule of Law and to Democracy itself.

The challenging theme that you have made the focus of the debate of this Social Week therefore forcefully engages everybody.

Indeed, democracy materializes every day in people’s lives and in the mutual respect of social relations, regardless of changing historical conditions, without this enabling submissive attitudes concerning its quality.

Can we feel satisfied with an imperfect democracy?

Can we be satisfied with a “low intensity” democracy?

Can we “pragmatically” surrender to the growing absenteeism of citizens in issues dealing with the res publica?

Can democracy exist without the voters’ consistent exercise of their role? We need to focus on the defection, desertion and resignation of many citizens in the latest round of elections.

We must be careful to not fall into the error of mistaking support with participation.  

Rather, we must take concrete action to enable every citizen to be in the condition to fully participate in the life of the Republic.

Rights materialize through the exercise of democracy.

If this weakens, it reduces the guarantee of their effective implementation.

Imperfect democracies harm freedoms: this is where voter turnout is poor, or where the “one man-one vote” principle is distorted through mechanisms that alter the representativity and the will of the voters.

Freedoms are all the more undermined where democracies are weakened and lessened through illiberal measures. 

Here again, Bobbio comes to our assistance when he warns against resorting to the simplification of the system or the restriction of rights “in the name of the duty of governing”.

By definition, a majoritarian democracy would be an irreconcilable contradiction arising from the confusion between instruments of governance and of the protection of effective rights and freedoms. 

At the heart of democracy – as we can read here – are people, relationships and the communities to which they give life, as well as the civil, social, and economic expressions stemming from their freedoms, their aspirations, and their humanity: this is the cornerstone of our Constitution.

This keystone of democracy develops and supports the growth of a Country, including the functioning of its Institutions when, in addition to a multitude of ideas and interests, there is a general perception of coexistence and of a common good.

This is true if we don’t fall in the trap of obsessively proclaiming our differences, being vengeful, and making demeaning statements.

It is true if the universality of rights is not undermined by conditions of unbalance, if solidarity remains the connective tissue of a sustainable economy, and if participation is active, widespread, and aware of its value and necessity and of one’s own essentiality.

In the changing times that we are witnessing, we perceive all the difficulty, and at times even the hardship, of making democracies work.

Today we can detect new criticalities that add on to old-dated problems.

Democracy is never conquered for evermore.

Quite the opposite: the occurrence of different historical conditions and changing characteristics, makes its realization necessarily thorough hand constant.

In the complexity of contemporary societies, known criticalities that undermine the life of States and communities are compounded with new epochal risks: environmental and climate hazards, and health and financial risks, in addition to the challenges produced by digitization and artificial intelligence.

Our societies growingly appear as risk societies whose risks are often merely tackled by developing technocratic solutions.

Therefore, it is all but inappropriate to question ourselves on the future of democracy and of the tasks conferred to it precisely because it is not simply a method but constitutes a “public space” in which the opinions of citizens are voiced as main actors.

In the course of time, the question has unfortunately been repeatedly asked: “What is the use of democracy?”. The answer is simple: to acknowledge and make effective the rights of people and of communities – because they are pre-existing, as provided for under Article 2 of our Constitution. 

Karl Popper showed how different forms of democratic life essentially achieve an “open society” capable of maximizing opportunities and building social identities that are subsequently destined to be transferred to the political and institutional spheres.

Italy’s own experience during the last 30 years is an example of this.

Over the 78 years since the 1946 referendum, liberalism-inspired freedoms and democratic liberty have contributed to the “open construction site” of our republican democracy, with the existence of different options, real-life experiences and the different mobilisations that derived from it.

In the liberal tradition, liberty evokes an intangible sphere of people’s fundamental rights and their unavailability in the contingent succession of majorities and, even more so, in a short-lived aggregation of interests.

Liberty, as it was expressed in the events of the 20^th century with the surge of the social issue, later defined the dynamics between the expectations and needs of collective identities in constantly transforming societies.

The matter is well-known to the Catholic movement, if it is true that the young and brilliant member of the Constituent Assembly represented by Giuseppe Dossetti raised the problem of “the effective access of people, of all the people, to power and to all the power, not only political, but also economic and social”, through the definition of “substantive democracy”.

Thus, it marked the transition to contents that would subsequently be enshrined in the articles of the first section of our Constitution, including those containing socio-economic provisions. It was a challenging reflection aimed at achieving the “common good”, which is not “public good”, in the interest of the majority but the good of each and every citizen simultaneously; of each and every one of us, according to the indications already set forth in the Social Week of 1945.

The road taken by the Catholics – with their contribution to the cause of democracy – was neither fortuitous nor recent, yet it should be recognized that the doctrine-based support to democracy was conditioned by the “Roman question” and the bumpy road to its solution.

However, already the eighth edition of the Social Week held in Milan in 1913, did not hesitate to assert the Catholics’ loyalty to the State and Homeland – the latter placed above the former – while, at the same time, pressing for the right to reject – as it was declared – any attempt to “transform the Homeland, the State, and its sovereignty, in an equal number of hostile institutions….while we feel second to no one in fulfilling those duties that bind us the ones to the others”. It was an expression of mature responsibility.

What was being raised was essentially the issue of freedom – also of religion – and this concerned the whole of society and not exclusively the relations between the Kingdom of Italy and the Holy See.

A few minutes ago, I recalled the 19^th edition of the Week held in Florence in October 1945. On that occasion, Egidio Tosato – an eminent jurist and later member of the Constituent Assembly – in his speech raised the issue of the balance between the values of liberty and of democracy and laid down the constitutional guarantees that would protect the citizens.

Democracy, as a form of government, is not sufficient to fully guarantee the protection of rights and freedoms: it can be distorted and abused with the pretext of a superior good or a common utility. The 20^th century reminds and warns us of this.

This too helped to give rise to the idea of a Supreme Constitutional Court.

Tosato challenged Rousseau’s assumption whereby the general will could find no limitation whatsoever in laws because the will of the people could change any legal provision or rule.

Tosato expressed this concept in very clear-cut words: “We all know by now that the presumed general will is actually nothing else but the will of a majority and that the will of a majority that considers itself to be representative of the will of all the people can be – as it has often turned out to be – more unfair and oppressive than the will of a prince”. Thus, he firmly said No to an absolutist State and to a limitless and potentially despotic authority.

Awareness of the limits is an essential factor for any institution, starting with the Presidency of the Republic, for democracy to be fair and necessarily vigorous. Guido Gonella, a key player in the Italian Catholic movement and later an eminent statist throughout the republican period who also spoke at the Week held in Florence in 1945, did not hesitate to detect within Constitutions a “form of life – as he said – that is loftier and universal”, thanks to the presence of constant elements that he defined as “ethical categories”, as well as variable elements that changed according to “historical needs”, and warned against the risks of an excessively rigid conservativeness and a too easily demagogical flexibility that might characterise them, thus succeeding to unconcernedly pass from absolutism to demagogy and then fall backwards into a dictatorship.   

This is the basis of the difference between the first and the second part of our Constitution.

The message was crystal clear: it is wrong and risky to surrender to contingent sensitivities, spurred by the daily temptations of political competition. An example of this is the frequent temptation to insert a reference to particular issues in the first part of the Constitution which, by the way – thanks to the wisdom of its writers – does not fail to regulate all these aspects anyway, through its founding principles and values.

The Constitution succeeded to give a sense and new depth to the unity of the Country and, for Catholics, upholding it coincided with their commitment to strengthen, and never weaken, the unity and cohesion of Italians.

A valuable concept, as Cardinal Zuppi recently recalled, because unity around the supreme values of liberty and democracy is the indispensable bond of our national community.

Pius XII, in his Christmas message of 1944, offered a host of important and fruitful indications.

Allow me to dwell upon the text to recall the indication that compounds the link between liberty and democracy with the connection between democracy and peace.

Because war stifles – or can stifle – democracy.                                     

The Pope recalled that democratic order includes the unity of humankind and of the family of peoples. He said: “From this principle stems the fate of peace”, invoking “war against war” and a call to “ban once and for all the war of aggression as a legitimate solution of international controversies and as an instrument of national aspirations”. 

A call for peace now renewed by Pope Francis.

It was not only required “irenics”: a predictable pacifist homage paid by the Church when faced with the tragedy of World War II.

Rather, it was a firm moral response aimed at interpreting the civil conscience certainly present among believers – and, in any case, in the conscience of the European people – which was destined to interface with the sensitivity of other conceptual positions.

Proof of this is the generation of Constitutions in the aftermath of World War II in Italy, just as in Germany, Austria, and France.

In the case of Italy, Articles 10 and 11 of our Charter define the international community with the aim of assuring and achieving peace.

Again, at the Week in Florence in 1945, Professor Pergolesi asserted citizens’ right to peace, internal and external, proposing to insert this principle in Constitutions, thus giving life to a new concept of inter-State relations.

If, in the past, democracy took root in States – often counterposed and in any case with rigid and unsurmountable borders – today, precisely the continent that was the crib of States, feels the need to build a solid European sovereignty capable of integrating and substantiating – concretely and not illusively – the member States; of enabling and reinforcing the sovereignty of the people as set forth in our Constitutions and projected into the European Parliament at EU institutional level.

The democratic path that began in Europe following the defeat of Nazism and Fascism has made it possible to strengthen the Institutions of the member Countries and to extend the protection of the rights of the citizens, putting in place that buttress of peace represented first by the European Community and now by the Union.

A more effective European unity – stronger and more efficient than what we have managed to achieve up to now – today is a necessary condition for solidarity and peace and for the protection and progress of our liberal and equalitarian orders.

Going back to our reflections on the strongholds of democracy, we should underscore that democracy implies the principle of equality – only just recalled by Cardinal Zuppi – because it acknowledges that people share the same dignity.

Democracy is instrumental to affirming the ideals of freedom.

Democracy is an antidote to war.

When we ask ourselves if democracy possesses a soul, when we ask ourselves what it is good for, we easily find straightforward answers.

The effort that you are again, in this occasion, making for the national community, recalls the words with which Cardinale Poletti, proclaimed the resumption of the Social Weeks at the 30^th General Assembly of the Bishops’ Conference of 1988: “The Italian Church’s Diaconate for the Country”.

Thanks to the contribution you made during the almost 120 years that have elapsed since the first edition, you have enriched the common good of our Homeland and the Republic is grateful to you for this.

Our democracy has taken root, has developed, and has become an unalienable trait of our national identity – while it was also becoming a sign of European identity – with the support of parties and movements that achieved democracy on their road to progress and on it they grounded their political action in a new historical phase.

Today we must look and focus on what is going on around us in an increasingly smaller and interconnected world.

Along with the upsurge of neo-colonialist and neo-imperialist temptations, new geopolitical changes are also caused by the growth trends of continent-wide States that were previously less developed, by territorial, ethnic, and religious tensions that not unfrequently escalate into dramatic wars, and by demographic growth trends and gigantic migration flows.

We are witnessing phenomena – the above as well as others – that deeply change our previous living conditions that we cannot be deceived into believing that will ever return.

From national problems – and consequently, their decision-making spheres – we now have European-wide problems and, for some aspects, global problems.

This is the condition that we now live in and in which we must make sure that what will prevail is the future of citizens and not of the superstructures that have taken shape over time.

The opposite of collaboration between equals is the return to the sphere of influence of the strongest or the better armed – which is being practiced and theorized at international level through war, intimidation and abuse – and, in similar contexts, by those in possession of an economic power that outmeasures the dimensions and functions of States.

Alcide De Gasperi’s historical vision and sagacity stood out when he opted for the freedom of the Atlantic Pact that the Republic entered into in 1949 and in his courageous advocation of Europe. 

Twenty years ago, at the 44^th Week held in Bologna, the issue was brought up of new scenarios and new powers challenging democracy.

We must stand up to the scrutiny of history and take stock of the state of health of national and supernational Institutions and of the political organization of society.

New barriers are constantly looming and threaten to undermine the bases of social cohabitation: the groundwork of democracy is neither exclusively institutional nor exclusively social but an interaction between the two.

What would be useful to do? Provide answers that make citizens’ and people’s political and social rights proceed concomitantly with the definition of a common future.

Let me shortly refer to Pope Paul VI’s Encyclical “Populorum progressio”: “We see them trying to eliminate every ill, to remove every obstacle which offends man's dignity. They are continually striving to exercise greater personal responsibility; to do more, learn more, and have more so that they might increase their personal worth. And yet, at the same time, a large number of them live amid conditions which frustrate these legitimate desires”.

Would anyone ever refuse to endorse these indications?

I’m afraid so, even if no one would actually have the courage to do so openly.

It is also for this reason that the exercise of democracy, as we have seen, does not boil down to a merely procedural aspect, nor is it fulfilled only through the unalienable right to express one’s vote in a round of elections. It presupposes the effort of elaborating a vision of the common good within which individual freedoms and social openings, the good of freedom and the good of a shared humanity, knowingly intersect because they are inseparable. Nor is it an issue limited to the sphere of the State. Mons. Adriano Bernareggi, in his conclusions to the Social Week of 1945 – we just saw him in the images – when quoting Jacques Maritain, argued that a new Christianity was appearing in Europe.

The unity to be achieved in modern civil communities was no longer uniquely grounded on a “spiritual basis” but rather, an earthly common good was to be founded precisely on the  intangible “dignity of human persons”.

This awareness was at the basis of such a long period of peace – that we hope will continue – in the European continent.

The bishop of the city of Bergamo continued: “Democracy is not governing the people but governing for the people”.

Coming to grips with difficulty and the risk of a democratic deficit must start from here.

From the fact that – obviously in different terms – but every time, we start anew from the capacity to implement the principle of equality which enables informed participation.

So that everybody might know that he/she is a key player in history.

Don Lorenzo Milani urged to “give the floor” because “only language makes people equal”. This means being social literates.

The Republic has come a long way but the task of having everybody take part in the life of his/her society and Institutions never ends.

Every generation, every epoque, must pass the test of the “literacy rate” and of the realization of democratic life.

This test is now more complex than ever in our contemporary technological society.

So, the fight to do away with “democracy illiterates” is a lofty and noble cause that concerns us all and not only those vested with responsibilities or who exercise power.

By definition, democracy is a bottom-up exercise linked to the life of the community because democracy is walking hand in hand.

I wish – and wish you – that a large number of people may walk down this road together.