The Piccolo was founded in Trieste to keep alive the feelings of Italian culture in the context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire with a liberal direction. At the time the government of the diocese of Trieste was governed by ecclesiastics proposed to the Pope by the Emperor, such as the Bishops mons. Legat, Glavina, Nagl and Karlin. When the Empire fell in 1918 and Italy came, Karlin asked to be transferred from Italian territory and was later appointed Bishop of Maribor.

The first Bishop of Trieste and Capodistria under the Italian Government will be the Piedmontese Angelo Bartolomasi, already a military Bishop, who will opt for the diocese of Pinerolo and will leave the Chair to Monsignor Luigi Fogar, secretary of the Archbishop of Gorizia, Francesco Borgia Sedej of Austro-Hungarian loyalty. Monsignor Luigi Fogar was relieved of his position in the Tergestina diocese for various reasons. He was replaced as Apostolic Administrator by the Metropolitan Archbishop of Gorizia, Monsignor Margotti. In 1938, Pius XI transferred Monsignor Antonio Santin from the diocese of Fiume to the united dioceses of Trieste and Capodistria.

 

The cultural, human and ecclesiastical formation of the new Bishop.

 

Santin, born in Rovigno, was educated first at the Italian school of Rovigno, then at the imperial-royal gymnasium of Capodistria, with eminent results. He studied theology at the Central Seminary of Gorizia, where the cultural feeling was of Central European setting.

In the summer months, for four years, he frequented the cultural circles of Vienna, where he met Monsignor Faidutti, a member of Parliament, and De Gasperi who provided him with the opportunity to publish some articles in the Italian-language press. His ecclesiastical education was intercultural, because in the central Seminary there were young people of different languages: Germans, Italians, Slavs and Croatians.

His basic culture was that of the Italian language and literature. He never had, as he writes, disagreements with fellow students of other ethnic groups.

Il Piccolo looked favorably upon the appointment of Santin to lead the diocese of Trieste, both because his attention to the Jews he had shown in Fiume was well known, and here in Trieste there was a large and qualified community, and because he had not compromised himself with fascism and had been able to be super partes with the Italian- and Slavic-speaking faithful.

The situation of the dioceses of Trieste and Capodistria that Santin was preparing to lead was marked, in addition to the problems of the epochal transition, above all by an exasperated ethnic situation, aggravated by the attitudes and choices of the Government and its representatives on site. The clergy was divided because of ethnic issues, which were among the causes of the removal of Bishop Fogar.

 

Santin's first difficulties in Trieste

 

Pius XI, transferring Bishop Santin from Fiume to Trieste-Capodistria, had put it at the heart of the Prelate to work so that in the Diocese, so divided by ethnic issues, opportunities for pacification would be attempted between the Italian-speaking clergy and the Slavic-speaking clergy (Slovenes and Croats); so that there would be relations not of subservience but of respect between the authority of the Diocese and the institutions of the State, also on the basis of the Concordat, to overcome what had occurred during the episcopate of his predecessor.

Santin, after entering S. Giusto, on September 4, 1938, in the pontifical homily underlined: "I am here all for you. Your joys will be my joys, your sorrows my sorrows. My strength, my life belong to you. I will spend them all.

without limits for your good. This is my only wish…My preferences are for those who suffer the most.”

We can say that Santin kept these promises and his life and his mission bear witness to this.

The first problems to be faced were those of the ethnic conflict situation.

To comply with the Pope's wishes, in April 1939, a few months after his entry into Trieste, he called a conference of all the clergy, both Italian and Slavic, on purely pastoral issues, on the search for the cause of men's disaffection from religious practice and to identify spiritual, cultural, associative and social initiatives that could suggest adequate responses.

Even before the conference began, the Bishop received a letter from Don Virgilio Šcek, a prominent figure among the Slovenian clergy, also on behalf of other Slavic brothers, who considered a conference with the simultaneous presence of both Italian and Slavic clergy inappropriate.

Santin responded with a letter dated March 10, debunking a plan to “mortify the Slavic clergy” and arguing that the topic was pastoral and therefore pertinent for all clergy. In June 1940 he offered all the clergy of the diocese of Trieste and Capodistria another conference on the “Ministerium Verbi”, choosing speakers from among the Italian and Slavic clergy.

Unfortunately, nationalism marked all those years of the war and the post-war period, providing “fuel” to those who expected a division in the Church for expansionist political purposes.

Santin, for his part, did his utmost to ensure the religious education of his Italian and Slavic-speaking faithful, so that they could have it in their mother tongue. For this reason, he directly asked Mussolini in an audience already in November 38 to intervene with the local hierarchs so that they would not prevent this.

 

Santin and the Jews during the racial laws

 

Santin was one of the few Bishops in Italy who openly denounced and worked concretely in favor of people of Jewish lineage and religion. The Piccolo of those years, precisely of 12, 13, 18 November 1938 and 11 December of that year, exposed the difficult situation of the application of the racial laws.

Trieste, which “figures among the first places among Italian cities both for the number of Jews it hosts and for the different nature of their origins” (Il Piccolo 12 November 1938), immediately saw the application of the measures in all sectors of the City, from the political and public sectors, to the financial world (Il Piccolo 13 November 1938) to that of sports and cultural societies (Il Piccolo 11 December 1938) and of the Press Club (Il Piccolo 18 November 1938).

Santin, faced with this massive and unjust purge of people who honestly earned their bread and characterized the life of the City with their professionalism, in addition to denouncing the situation in the homily of St. Justus, thought it appropriate to intervene with the Head of Government himself, renewing his dissent and his denunciation of the measure itself and of what was happening in Trieste and in the territory of his diocese and in Fiume.

As the barbarity continued, he worked in synergy with the Secretary of the Jewish Community, Dr. Morpurgo, to save Jewish people and families in danger, directing them, through the intervention of Dr. Guglielmo Reiss Romoli, general manager in Milan of the STET telephone company, to people close to the attention of Cardinal Schuster, so that they could reach Switzerland.

Santin writes in his book Al tramonto: «I had to continually intervene in defense of countless people from Trieste and the diocese who were being hit. The Jewish community entrusted me with the most precious things they had for safekeeping, and Dr. Carlo Morpurgo, its secretary, was with me every day to help his co-religionists. Everything possible was done both with the authorities and by hiding those who were in danger. And it was not only in Trieste that intervention was done in their defense».

Santin in 1943, when in Trieste, Istria and the Carso occupied by the Nazis arrests and internments were the order of the day, on the solemnity of St. Justus asked all his people to "transgress the racial laws and to carry out that Christian mutiny which is worthy of a disciple of Christ" (from Sunset).

On March 29, 1944, he protested with a letter to the Prefect of Trieste, Bruno Coceani, against the removal from the psychiatric hospital and the chronic section of all the sick and elderly of Jewish origin.

Santin managed to save many Jews, unfortunately not all. His regret – among many – was the internment of Dr. Morpurgo and the young intellectual Pia Rimini, who, not having listened to his advice, was locked up in the Risiera di San Sabba and then deported and never returned.

 

Santin and those deported by the Nazis to the "service of work"

 

The so-called “work service” was invented and implemented for the citizens of the Adriatic coast, which was considered annexed to Germany, by the German Supreme Command based in Trieste on September 14, 1944 with a special announcement. The intention of the Nazi-Germans was to recruit from ten to twelve thousand people. They reached eight thousand. The salary was set at five lire per day plus food and lodging in the work camps.

On September 16, 1944, out of four thousand “call-ups,” only four hundred people showed up.

On September 20 of that year, due to this failure, the SS carried out a roundup throughout Trieste but without any success.

Bishop Santin was suspicious of the matter and was causing him much concern.

He asked to visit the places of the “work service” to ascertain the conditions of the people “called” to forced service, because the Bishop had received desperate news imploring him for help.

Then he was allowed to go to the labor camp. In his memoirs At sunset writes: «The impression I had was frightening. Housed like animals, with starvation rations, many without shoes and poorly dressed, they had to work in any weather. No consideration was given to the sick. And then I had no peace. I spoke, I wrote, I protested, I begged».

The intention was to improve food and lodging and to send home those who had completed the established period and especially the sick. Santin protested to the German authorities both about the treatment of the workers and about the fact that the agreements, even if it was a noose, had not been respected.

He was promised that probably before Christmas those entitled would return home. Nothing was assured for the sick. Then Santin spoke with some priests to see if they would be available, with him, for an exchange with the most seriously ill in the work camp. Having obtained the consent of these priests (Don Mario Shirza, Don Enrico Minatori, Don Carlo Tarlao, Don

Remigio Carletti, Fr. Roberto Rosa, Fr. Giuseppe Matteucci, Fr. Ambrogio Mosconi, Fr. Crescenzio Möll, Fr. Bernardino de Tomasi, Don Alfredo Brezzi, Fr. Giovan Battista Porta, Fr. Benigno Vessato) and their willingness to barter, sent Dr. Hinterreger “the offering” on November 29, 1944, after having denounced in the homily of the Madonna della Salute, on November 21, the very serious situation of the workers and the sick in the labor camps of Taiano and Ciceria, offering himself, some of the diocesan clergy and some religious as an exchange.

This prompted the Nazi Germans to send the sick and those who had completed their service back to their families at Christmas.

 

Msgr. Ettore Malnati

Episcopal Vicar for the Laity and Culture – Diocese of Trieste

 

Source: Il Piccolo – 30/03/2021

 

Column “Readers of “Il Piccolo” for 140 years” edited by ANVGD and the Multimedia Documentation Center of Julian, Istrian, Rijeka and Dalmatian Culture.