28 Facts About Luigi Sturzo

Luigi Sturzo was known in his lifetime as a former Christian socialist turned popularist, and is considered one of the fathers of the Christian democratic platform.

Luigi Sturzo was the founder of the Luigi Sturzo Institute in 1951.

Luigi Sturzo was born on 26 November 1871 in Caltagirone to Felice Luigi Sturzo and Caterina Boscarelli.

One ancestor, Giuseppe Luigi Sturzo, served as the mayor of Caltagirone in 1864 until an unspecified time, and another ancestor was Croce Luigi Sturzo who wrote about the Roman Question.

Luigi Sturzo's elder brother Mario was a noted theologian and Bishop of Piazza Armerina.

Luigi Sturzo commenced his studies for the ecclesial life in 1888.

Luigi Sturzo received his ordination to the priesthood on 19 May 1894 from the Bishop of Caltagirone Saverio Gerbino at the Chiesa del Santissimo Salvatore in Enna.

Luigi Sturzo founded the newspaper La Croce di Constantino in Caltagirone in 1897.

In 1900, at the same time as the Boxer Rebellion, Luigi Sturzo asked his bishop to serve in the missions in China despite the persecutions the Catholic Church was enduring there; he was denied this request on the account of his precarious state of health.

Luigi Sturzo was among the founders of the Italian People's Party on 19 January 1919.

Luigi Sturzo was a committed anti-fascist who discussed the ways in which Catholicism and fascism were incompatible in such works as Coscienza cristiana and criticized what he perceived to be clerical fascist elements within the Vatican.

Luigi Sturzo did this in order to elaborate on what he called the "dialectic of the concrete" and opposed this dialectic as a veer towards absolute idealism and scholastic realism.

The leadership of Luigi Sturzo was increasingly challenged within the party in 1923.

Luigi Sturzo remained active in the party until 1924 when Cardinal Gasparri himself arranged for his emigration to London after fascist pressures and physical threats against Luigi Sturzo escalated further.

Luigi Sturzo was exiled from 1924 to 1946 first in London and then in the United States.

Luigi Sturzo was consigned to a three-month educational trip in London; the choice of London was perhaps intended to isolate Luigi Sturzo because he did not speak the language and it did not contain a large population of like-minded Catholics.

Luigi Sturzo moved to the residence of the Oblates of Saint Charles in Bayswater and then in January 1925 to the Servites at their priory of Saint Mary in Fulham Road where he was asked to leave in 1926 because the Servites' motherhouse in Rome was being denied funds as long as Sturzo was their guest.

In 1926, Luigi Sturzo refused an offer from the Vatican that was communicated through Cardinal Francis Bourne to serve as a chaplain in a convent in Chiswick and lodging for his twin sister Nelina in exchange for ending his journalistic activism and issuing a "spontaneous declaration" that he was retired from politics in full.

On 22 September 1940, Luigi Sturzo boarded the Samaria in Liverpool bound for New York hoping for an academic appointment and arrived there on 3 October 1940.

Luigi Sturzo was instead sent to Saint Vincent's Hospital in Jacksonville, Florida, which was filled with priests who were ill and about to die.

Luigi Sturzo returned to Brooklyn in April 1944 but his return to his homeland received a Vatican and Alcide De Gasperi veto in October 1945 and May 1946.

Luigi Sturzo set off to return to his homeland on the Vulcania on 27 August 1946 but did not have a dominant role in Italian politics after his arrival on 6 September 1946 in Naples.

Luigi Sturzo instead retired to the outskirts of Rome after landing in Naples.

Luigi Sturzo was made a member of the Senate of the Republic on 17 December 1952 and senator for life in 1953 at the behest of the then Italian president Luigi Einaudi and he obtained a dispensation from Pope Pius XII in order to accept the title.

Luigi Sturzo was carried to his bed still in his vestments and his health took a sharp decline until his death.

Luigi Sturzo died in Rome in the afternoon of 8 August 1959 at the general house of the Canossians; his remains were interred in the church of San Lorenzo al Verano but were transferred in 1962 to the church of Santissimo Salvatore in Caltagirone.

The beatification process for Luigi Sturzo opened under Pope John Paul II on 23 March 2002 after the Congregation for the Causes of Saints issued the official nihil obstat decree and titled the priest as a Servant of God.

Luigi Sturzo was the author of several works in relation to philosophical and political thought.