The Saint & the Unemployed

The friends of Florence's bustling Mayor Giorgio La Pira are not surprised when he shows up somewhere without his shoes. They know, without asking, that he has given them to the poor. He regularly gives away clothing, food, and most of his salary. A bachelor, he sleeps in an unheated monastery cell or, in very cold weather, in the office of a doctor friend. La Pira is the extraordinary Christian who tries every hour of the day to practice what he reads in the Gospels.

Son of a Sicilian packinghouse worker, Giorgio La Pira, 49, worked his way through law school, moved to Florence 29 years ago. He was an Under Secretary of Labor in Alcide de Gasperi's Cabinet, but left because he could not promote enough backing for his full-employment ideas (he wanted jobs--made work if necessary--for all of Italy's 2,000,000 unemployed). He believes everyone is entitled to "a job, a house, and music." As Demo-Christian candidate for Florence's mayoralty two years ago, he blasted the Communists loose from a five-year grip on the city's administration. To poverty-ridden Florence he has brought low-cost housing, sanitary improvements, tree planting, free concerts. Florentines sometimes call him Il Santo (The Saint).

Slump & Shutdown. Last week all Florence was caught up in La Pira's latest Christian endeavor: persuading the government to take over the shut-down Pi-gnone factory on Florence's outskirts, the oldest industrial plant in the city. Pignone, a dreary and sprawling factory which used to make torpedoes for Mussolini, was taken over after the war by Snia Viscosa, Italy's biggest textile combine, which used it to make cotton-spinning machines for export. But a slump in textile demand and high costs (partly caused by Communist-inspired strikes) brought on a layoff last January of 350 workers, leaving 1,750. Last month Pignone's stockholders decided to halt operations altogether, and the dreaded closing notice was posted.

The Pignone workers refused to leave the plant. They slept and ate inside the factory, and some kept on working their machines. Mayor La Pira rushed to their aid. He attended Mass with them in the factory courtyard, talked strategy with the Communist-dominated union committee, and showed the workers that someone besides the Communists was active in their interests. Merchants donated meat, fish, pasta, bread, wine and cigarettes; the city and provincial councils scraped up 3,000,000 lire ($4,800) for the workers' families. La Pira fired off a letter to the Vatican, got a papal blessing on his campaign.

Letter & Spirit. Last week Mayor La Pira was in Rome--where many officials in the Pella government affectionately call him "Giorgio"--trying to persuade the government to run Pignone and save 1,750 jobs. (The government-run Institute for Industrial Reconstruction, an inheritance from Mussolini, keeps several plants going at a loss rather than add their workers to Italy's unemployment rolls.) Fumed Giorgio La Pira: "This coldly calculated liquidation has offended the city of Florence. Seldom, as in this case, has the letter of the law served to cover so much inhumanity of spirit."

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