Igino Giordani “truly foretold, by at least a quarter of a century, certain aspects of the communitarian process which was started after the Second World War: he saw the real interdependence of the economies of the European States, the winners and the losers, and the common risk of becoming the debtors of the USA, an ‘American Dominion’. He saw a growing movement of social solidarity and an Europeanization of culture provoked by the bloody experiences of war. To distance themselves from the ‘brink of collective suicide’ and save themselves from a new ‘imminent massacre’, and to avoid the ‘decadence’ – which would be ‘taken advantage of by races (yellow and black) which have been stirred up by us and continents which have been brought to life by us’ – he pointed out to the peoples of the old continent an inescapable historical duty: the overcoming of nationalisms in the formation of a Federation of the United States of Europe. He held however as an absolute necessity the passage to democracy of all the states: he saw it also as an aim that ‘diplomacies do not know how to achieve’. And so he called on a ‘spiritual force’ that could work as an ‘element of unification’ […]”.
“The clear distinction – but not separation – between religion and politics was already then a tenet in his conception of the lay nature of the State. With full respect of such a distinction he expounded his European ‘utopia’ with a spiritual basis, ‘utopia’ which looks today to be much less unreal, to such an extent as to appear – appropriately re-dimensioned – like a real intuition.
The historian cannot exaggerate and speak about prophetisms; but at the same time he cannot ignore the above mentioned premonitions of Giordani back in 1925 on the risks, prospects and problems of a future Europe; nor can he undervalue his certainty of the role of Christianity in Europe, and especially, of the unifying role of moral and cultural values, which are indispensible aspects, to reach, beyond economic co-interests and the necessary institutional structures, a substantial harmony between the different identities of peoples for the birth of a European ‘consciousness’.”
Tommaso Sorgi, Igino Giordani. Storia dell’uomo che divenne Foco, Città Nuova Ed., Roma 2014, pp. 109,111.
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