On the day of the liturgical memorial of Blessed Giuseppe Toniolo (1845-1918), towards the ninth edition of the Giuseppe Toniolo Award (7 October 2024), looking ahead to 7 March 2025, the 180th anniversary of the birth of the great Catholic sociologist and economist (Treviso, 7 March 1845), we reaffirm the extraordinary relevance of the thought and action of the professor from Treviso proclaimed blessed by the Church in Rome on 29 April 2012, buried since 30 September 1940 in the Cathedral of Pieve di Soligo, the city of origin of his wife Maria Schiratti. Blessed Toniolo has always been very attached to Pieve di Soligo: he got married here on September 4, 1878, spent summers in the house in Piazza Umberto I, was active in the ecclesiastical, economic and social environment of the entire area, wanted his last earthly home - because in this way, he said, "the humble will come to lay a requiem on my tomb" - and the miracle of a healing through his intercession occurred, recognized by Pope Benedict XVI in 2011. The national committee for canonization is chaired by Archbishop Domenico Sorrentino.
Ten intense years of activities and initiatives in the name of Toniolo
Already throughout the resumption of the national and diocesan cause for the beatification of the servant of God Giuseppe Toniolo, between the last fifteen years of the last century and the entire first period of the new millennium, the city of Pieve di Soligo had hosted important celebrations, conferences and events within the scope of the religious, cultural and educational initiatives put in place by the diocese of Vittorio Veneto to promote knowledge and devotion to Toniolo. On the occasion of the beatification and subsequently, starting from a first seminar of the Fai Cisl of Veneto in February 2014, the Pieve community was a point of reference and venue for numerous and qualified events also promoted by the Diocesan Institute "Blessed Toniolo. Le vie dei Santi", culminating in April 2024 in the new conference of the national Fai Cisl, exactly ten years after the first in 2014.
The value of Toniolo's message for our time
This recent history of a decade of important activities lived in Pieve di Soligo in the name of the memory of Toniolo and the truth of his teachings for the present, especially in the economic and social fields, commits us to reiterate today with strength, conviction and determination the extraordinary concreteness and foresight of the teaching and work of the great teacher from Treviso. At a time when the Social Week of Catholics in Italy, held in Trieste in July 2024, also questioned and sought operational answers to the great theme of participation and democracy, we can look to Giuseppe Toniolo - founder among other things of the Social Weeks in Pistoia in 1907 - as an icon and fruitful symbol of a life lived in the service of the common good, nourished at the roots of the profound values of freedom, justice and solidarity towards all.
A Card to Say Toniolo to the Present and the Future
On the model of the text “The social program of Christian democracy”, written by Giuseppe Toniolo and published for the first time in 1899 in “Il popolo italiano” – which highlighted twelve points of the program expressed in the clarity of the statement “We want” – we hereby express our commitment to recognize, assume and promote a series of fundamental values and basic lines of action inspired by Blessed Toniolo, for a new humanism capable of giving answers of meaning, life and hope to the men and women of our time and our communities.
1) Fullness of life. We want to reaffirm the beauty of a culture for life, in all its phases, in which each person realizes his vocation in full, continually reforming himself in order to better reform society, overcoming selfishness, iniquity, idolatries of money and the faceless economy and violence that condemn people to isolation, closure, fear and conflict. As Toniolo did, we work for an open, vital, just and supportive society.
2)Person in the center. We want to commit ourselves to promoting a culture that reaffirms the primacy of the person and his freedom and dignity, as a fundamental and indispensable value of our Constitution and of democracy in Italy and Europe. As was the deep convictions and work developed by Toniolo throughout his life, we believe that the path of Christian social doctrine, born with his fundamental contribution, is a current and concrete model of common good.
3) Support for families. We want effective, convincing and far-sighted family policies to be activated, to give full support and fair value to the first and fundamental domestic nucleus at the base of society. The defense and promotion of the family, as a privileged place of growth, education and social cohesion, were among Toniolo's concerns, and today an extraordinary effort is needed to promote the family institution and overcome the demographic winter.
4) Centrality of school, culture and training. We want the formative and educational dimensions related to the young generations to occupy a central place in the Italian agenda, with investments in projects, resources and people dedicated to the primacy of culture and knowledge to guarantee the development of our country. For Toniolo, inspirer of the Catholic University, young students were the first guarantee of the future: in this time they must be helped and encouraged with coherent choices.
5)Primacy of ethics in economics. We want to assume as decisive and distinctive the teaching of Toniolo on the primacy of ethics in economics, as he highlighted with his first lesson on December 5, 1873 at the University of Padua. Only this basic conviction of a truly human economy can generate visions and practices respectful of the person and the common good, in line with the teachings of Christian social doctrine and papal encyclicals.
6) Business and work for all in safety. We want to strongly reiterate the right and duty of every person to contribute to the development of society through work, in all its forms, respected and fairly paid, experienced with the adoption of all protection and safety measures, never devalued or exploited, favored by new technologies, free, creative, participatory and supportive. It was the qualifying message of Toniolo's entire life, more relevant than ever for our society.
7) New corporate and community welfare. We want to confirm the need for a new look at the company as a community of people who put their talent and work at the service of a project of growth and sustainable development. On this basis, it is necessary to strengthen all corporate welfare initiatives that aim to improve the well-being of workers and their families, as Toniolo did, within the vision of an efficient community welfare for all.
8)Cooperation in modernity. We want to renew our trust in the vast world of cooperation, which saw its origins thanks to the intuitions and commitment of Toniolo. By presenting an original structure in the economic field based on principles of participation, democracy, efficiency and solidarity, in line with the dictates of article 45 of our Constitution, it contributes to improving the pluralism of the system and its concrete attention to people's lives.
9) Social democracy and subsidiarity. We want to support the decisive role of the values and structures of a socially advanced democracy, as was the vision of Toniolo, in which all cultural, civil and economic forces cooperate for the common good, taking to heart the fate of the weakest and most fragile. And all this happens in the convinced perspective of subsidiarity in society and institutions, favoring participation from the bottom and at the levels closest to the citizens.
10)Intermediate bodies protagonists. We want to underline the relevance of the model supported by Toniolo of a society open to the presence and activity of intermediate bodies, starting from the family, which are privileged places for meeting, training and participation. Associations, unions, cultural, professional and economic representatives, ecclesial community and civil society play an irreplaceable role in giving face and substance to the dynamics of a true democracy.
11)Peace is a necessary good. We want to make our own the strong aspiration for peace and international cooperation of Giuseppe Toniolo, who in 1917 asked Benedict XV to create a special Institute with these purposes. In the dramatic time we are living in, in which the world is marked by bitter conflicts and bloody wars, we cannot but renew our appeal and our convinced action so that peace may be affirmed as a permanent destiny for all humanity.
12) Participation in the common good. We want to relaunch the need and urgency of a constructive, patient and daily commitment for the common good, the good of all and each, as Toniolo did with the testimony of his entire existence. Against sterile lamentation, refuge in the private, distrust and abstentionism, the idea of politics as a "demanding form of charity", participated from below, in line with the contents of the Social Week of Trieste, must be cultivated again and again.
Pieve di Soligo, September 4, 2024
Pieve di Soligo, Tuesday 3 September 2024 – 11.30 am. Council Chamber, Municipal Building, Palazzo Vaccari