Abstract

The article investigates the existing relations between new Catholic movements and populist radical right parties in Italy through a meso-level analysis of contextual opportunities in three different spheres: religious, militant and political. Through a qualitative operationalization of the concept of structure of political opportunities, the research presents an in-depth discussion of the movement and party-political trajectories of the anti-gender cause. It aims at highlighting, on the one hand, the construction of a religiously-oriented but secularized discourse by organizations of the Italian pro-life galaxy and, on the other hand, the appropriation of the instruments of contestation of LGBT+ policies by parties and leaders of the Italian radical right. The article proposes the concept of political instrumentation of religion to better grasp the multidimensionality of a phenomenon whose threefold religious, militant and political nature is both inseparable and unprecedented