CATHOLIC SPORTS IN ITALY: AFTER WORLD WAR II UNTIL SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

In Italy, catholic sport is of fundamental importance for the development of the Italian sport system as we know it today. Historiography has studied the origin and development of this sport, exactly the happenings in the first quarter of the twentieth century, that is the works of Stefano Pivato and especially of Felice Fabrizio. This paper has the aim to explore the development and importance that this sport had to do with the national sphere of sport starting with its reconstruction after the World War II. This period coincides with the years of the Second Vatican Council (CVII) on one side and the Olympic Games in Rome on the other, and wish to show the reciprocal influence that exist between these events. It will be also be explained the Centro Sportivo Italiano (CSI) and its contribution to the sports system in Italy during this time, the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960 and about the push that CSI gave to spread the Olympic spirit among the population, of the CVII and the influence that this event had in the dynamics of the CSI. There are not many who know that the Council speaks also about sports, in particular in the Constitution Gaudium et Spes, a document in which the Church give heed to the signs of times and listens to the contemporary world, and opens for further research and dialogue. This attitude of openness gave a chance to the conciliar Fathers to reflect about sports as an important social phenomenon of the twentieth century.