The Financing of the Italian Clergy: State Control of the Church?

Any time the Church depends on the State for financing it is guaranteed to lead to a toeing of the State's line in many matters.

From One Peter Five

By Gaetano Masciullo

The financing of the Italian clergy represents one of the most insidious and sophisticated tools through which the state, particularly the Italian state (but also supranational institutions that view the Church as merely a means of social engineering), has gradually subjected the Catholic Church to its own interests. The Church, deprived of political sovereignty and a significant portion of its temporal assets after the capture of Rome by the Piedmontese (1870), has found itself in a position of increasing financial dependence on the Italian state.

This mechanism, far from being a simple economic subsidy, has proven to be a political weapon that, over time, has profoundly altered the freedom of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. This is partly at the root of the historical process that has led to the current management of the Italian Episcopal Conference under the leadership of Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, a leadership fully aligned with the socialist, globalist, and woke agenda proposed by external entities opposed to the Catholic Church.

With the end of the Papal Kingdom and the proclamation of Rome as the Italian capital city in 1870, the Italian clergy suddenly found itself deprived of the income generated by ecclesiastical possessions. The Law of Guarantees (May 13, 1871) granted certain privileges to the Holy See but did not prevent the growing marginalization of the Church’s temporal power. Blessed Pius IX rejected this law as unilateral and harmful to Catholics, responding with the famous Non Expedit, prohibiting Italian Catholics from participating in the political life of the newly formed Kingdom of Italy, which was founded on revolutionary and Masonic ideals.

The issue of sustaining the clergy remained urgent, and for this reason, the Italian government introduced the congrua system. The congrua originally referred to the portion of income from Church property used to economically support the priests working there. After the enactment of the so-called “laws abolishing the ecclesiastical estate” (1866-67), through which Italy forcibly confiscated all Church properties, the term congrua came to signify a monthly allowance paid by Italy to priests—a sort of minimum state salary.

This measure, though it may have seemed like an act of goodwill, in reality concealed a subtle attempt at control: the state arrogated the right to determine the amount of subsidies, economically binding the priests and, consequently, limiting their freedom in preaching, doctrinal influence, and especially moral guidance. In practice, a significant portion of the Italian clergy became financially dependent on the state, which could at any time reduce funds or impose conditions based on compliance with governmental policies.

The signing of the Lateran Pacts in 1929 between Mussolini and the Holy See marked a decisive turning point in the relationship between the Italian state and the Church. On the one hand, the Church regained a position of prestige within Italian society; on the other, it accepted a financing system that made it even more dependent on the state. The Concordat effectively treated priests as “public employees” and initiated a process that further consolidated the clergy’s subordination to Italian political institutions.

To fully understand the true scope of the Lateran Pacts—often presented by both Catholic and anti-Catholic perspectives as a shining example of reconciliation and even an alliance between civil power and the Catholic institution—it is essential to consider a series of underlying elements.

First and foremost, the Fasci di combattimento (“Italian Fasces of Combat”), founded by Benito Mussolini in 1919, did not originate (as is often oversimplified following Marxist rhetoric), as a bastion in defense of Western capitalism. Rather, they emerged as an organized expression of a minority faction within the Italian Socialist Party of that time.[1] Members of this faction sought to adopt a revolutionary strategy of the “maximalist” type. According to this vision, the revolution should be realized through force, not unlike what the Leninists believed. In contrast, the majority faction of the Socialist Party, represented by figures such as Giacomo Matteotti, favored a more gradual strategy, known in the Anglo-French world as Fabianism (from the name of the Fabian Society). In summary, Fascism initially emerged as a revolutionary movement and, consequently, as an anti-Catholic force.

Secondly, to further support this thesis, it is important to consider that the Italian Fascist Party, from the outset, received strong ideological and financial support in an anti-Leninist sense from a certain faction of Italian Freemasonry. A significant Masonic schism occurred in 1908 (officially formalized in 1910), leading to the establishment of the Grand Lodge of Italy A.L.A.M., which split from the Grand Orient of Italy.[2] This schism arose from ideological and strategic-tactical divergences. The Freemasons of the G.O.I., for their part, supported the necessity of an openly anti-Catholic approach.

The Freemasons of the G.L.I., on the other hand, sought to adopt a more conciliatory approach, allowing for a “gentle initiation” of Catholics—possibly even clergy—into Masonic ideals. This Masonic strategy permeated Fascism through the influence of numerous figures, notably Raoul Vittorio Palermi (1864–1948) and Arnaldo Mussolini (1885–1931), the younger brother of the more famous Benito. This reveals the true intention of the Fascist regime to consolidate a strategic alliance with the Catholic Church.

Thirdly, it is important to note that, from the Catholic perspective, the Lateran Pacts were regarded as a Concordat—that is, a diplomatic agreement made with a power considered intrinsically incompatible with the structure, vocation, and morality of Catholicism. This was not unlike the Concordats signed with Napoleonic France (1801) or Nazi Germany (1933).

Fascism exploited this economic dependence to ensure the silence or, in some cases, the approval of the clergy on political and social issues. Although Catholicism was recognized as the state religion, Mussolini’s regime skillfully maneuvered the ecclesiastical hierarchy to prevent the Vatican from mounting any real opposition to the regime. The establishment of Azione Cattolica (‘Catholic Action’) as the only permitted Catholic organization was itself a compromise that limited the Church’s freedom. Nevertheless, Pope Pius XI, realizing the dangerous threat the Italian Church was facing as a result of the signing of the Concordat, issued the encyclical Non abbiamo bisogno (June 29th, 1931), in which he denounced the Fascists’ attempt to distort Catholic faith according to Mussolini’s Machiavellian reasons of state.

With the revision of the Concordat in 1984, Italy ceased to recognize Catholicism as the state religion, and the congrua system was replaced by the 8×1000 mechanism. In Italy, the 8×1000 system allows taxpayers to allocate 0.8% of their income tax to a religious organization or to the state for social and cultural purposes. When filing taxes, they can choose which institution to support. If they don’t choose, their share is distributed proportionally based on the preferences of those who did. In practice, the majority of the funds not explicitly allocated end up with the Catholic Church, which traditionally receives the largest share of expressed preferences.

This system, seemingly more autonomous, in practice introduced a new form of dependence. Instead of receiving direct funding from the state, the Italian Church obtained funds based on citizens’ income tax declarations. While this formula appears to respect ecclesiastical autonomy, it has, in reality, created a perverse incentive for the Italian Church to conform to the dictates of the dominant culture to avoid losing public support and, consequently, funding.

Over the years, this mechanism has at least partially contributed to leading the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) to a progressive moderation of its doctrinal positions, in order to avoid alienating the economic support of the faithful, who are inevitably more influenced by modern cultural relativism. The Italian Church, once a bastion of Catholic doctrine, has thus transformed into an institution that avoids confrontation with secularist ideologies, often embracing progressive narratives to ensure the continuity of funding, as has happened on multiple occasions with the statements of Bishop Vincenzo Paglia, a member of the Community of Sant’Egidio.

This process reached its peak under the leadership of another prominent early member of the Community of Sant’Egidio, Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna. His leadership is emblematic of a Church increasingly influenced by the demands of secularist, woke, socialist, and pro-European progressivism. Under his guidance, the CEI has effectively abandoned any cultural and political resistance to secularism, has welcomed numerous progressive stances (including ideological environmentalism, total deregulation of immigration, and interreligious dialogue without doctrinal boundaries), and has consigned to obscurity, if not outright disapproval, any concrete reference to the supernatural. This was evident in the case of the alleged Eucharistic miracle of Savarna, in Italy, which was silenced by the Archbishop of Ravenna-Cervia.

Zuppi has openly supported pro-European policies, embracing the rhetoric of the European Commission and the technocracy of Brussels. Furthermore, he has promoted a vision of the Church aligned with the woke agenda, where social and political issues take precedence over the evangelizing mission. This position is not merely the result of a theological choice but also the direct historical and sociological consequence of decades of state funding, which have made the Italian clergy more attuned to political trends than to fidelity to the Magisterium.

The CEI is one of the most influential episcopal conferences in the world, and its progressive capitulation to progressive agendas poses a danger to the entire universal Church. Its management is often taken as a model by other episcopal conferences, especially in Europe, contributing to the spread of a Church model subservient to secular powers rather than a courageous witness to the Truth.

If the Italian Church wants to regain its independence and its role as a moral guide, it must free itself from the yoke of state funding. This means reforming the 8×1000 system, finding new forms of sustenance that do not depend on popular consensus or government control, and strongly reaffirming its doctrinal identity.

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[1] Cf. Gaetano Masciullo, La Tiara e la Loggia, Verona: Fede & Cultura (2023), p. 243; Marco Novarino, La cuéstion masonica en la izquierda italiana. De la ‘excomunion’ del congreso socialista de 1914 a los primeros congresos de la Internacional Comunista, “REHMLAC + Revista de Estudios Historicos de la Masoneria Latinoamericana y Caribena”, v. 13, n. 1 (2021), pp. 204-224.

[2] Aldo A. Mola, Storia della massoneria in Italia, Milano: Bompiani (2019); Gaetano Masciullo, op. cit., pp. 210-211.

Pictured: Pietro, Cardinal Gasparri and Benito Mussolini signing the Lateran Treaty of 1929