Abstract

The essay briefly explains the ecclesiastical policy guidelines of the main parties on the Italian political stage from World War II to the end of the «First Republic» (1992). It then focuses on the recent past and describes how the new political parties - the conservative coalitions led by Silvio Berlusconi and the socialist coalitions led by Romano Prodi - handled the same issues during the last twenty years. The Author's thesis is that, in different ways during the whole history of the Italian Republic, every party or coalition agreement who reached the Government aimed to capture the Catholic constituency (and in some cases the generic religious constituency) by a policy of accord with the Catholic Church and recently also with religious minorities.