"You Be Mayor"

Italy has few more appealing public figures than Don Luigi Sturzo, the white-haired priest who founded the Christian Democratic Party, and Giorgio La Pira, the bustling little mayor of Florence. Both are ardent Roman Catholics who believe in infusing militant Christian principle into politics. Both are men of compassion and understanding. Both believe in putting into practice the words of the Gospels. But they emphatically disagree on one vital point: the role of the state in human affairs.

Last week readers of Rome's conservative Giornale d'ltalia were treated to a front-page debate between Don Luigi, venerable foe of statism and apostle of enlightened individualism (TIME. March 8), and Mayor La Pira, a man who insists that a man's job is as much a piece of property as a man's land, that it is the state's duty to help every citizen have "a job, a house and music."

"Spurious Marxism." In characteristic fashion, Mayor La Pira was worried by a layoff at a Florence toilet-goods factory that would put 72 people out of work. La Pira sent off telegrams to Rome demanding government action to save their jobs. When he was publicly criticized for doing so, La Pira replied hotly that the times call for "essentially an economy of state intervention."

From his book-cluttered room in a Roman convent, Don Luigi penned a reply for Giornale's front page: "La Pira is saying that the problem can be solved by the state taking over the nation's financial system entirely, thus abolishing that one-fourth of the productive system of Italy that is still in private hands. This would mean that Italy would have complete state socialism . . . First, let's get this straight. La Pira, a good Christian, wants no God but the true God. He thinks, as I do, that the state is a means, not an end or the end ... He has come to the conclusion, by his steady contact with the poor man, that the state can assure each citizen a minimum living wage by taking over the country's economy.

"History shows no example of a flourishing economy where the economy is in the hands of the state . . . Certain Catholics should stop toying with the idea of a spurious Marxism ... I just can't understand those Catholics who would eliminate the social classes in order to enhance their social figure and who would transform a justified limited state intervention into downright economic and political state monopoly just for the sake of having a society that has no economic differences."

The Pharisee. Mayor La Pira, who has been known to go barefoot after giving his shoes to a poor man, and regularly distributes food to the poor, pounced back with a long open letter to "the Rev. Sturzo": "You should experience what the mayor of a city with a population of 400,000 has to suffer, expecially when that city has some 10,000 unemployed, when some 2,977 young people are still looking for their first jobs and when there are many concerns starting to lay off people . . . More than 2,000 have recently been evicted from their homes, and there are in all 37,000 who receive some form of assistance from the community.

"Now what should be done by the mayor, who is the head and in a way the father responsible for the common family of citizens? ... I hope that opposition to a totalitarian state does not mean opposition to a state that intervenes in order to cure the so-called free state's financial, economic and social injustices. There is a social as well as a moral side to economics.

"What should the mayor of the city tell his citizens who have been thrown out of their homes, out of their jobs, who now ask for a place to live and work? Should I say I cannot help you, I cannot break the divine laws of private initiative? And what would those poor devils answer me? This man, would they say, is a Christian? No. This man is no good; he's a pharisee.

"This is not Marxism, Don Sturzo. It's easy to accuse people of Marxism when they try to get off their horses and help their wounded brothers . . . But come, please. You be mayor for a while."

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