The conference, as part of the 2018 -2020 Celebrations Luigi Sturzo and popularism, intends to focuses to the pre-partisan dimension – more properly “administrative” – of the social and political commitment of Luigi Sturzo in the early years of his public activity in Sicily.

In the speech that Sturzo addresses in November 1902, in Caltanissetta, the cultural and cultural order that underlies his long social and political commitment emerges with a light. With Sturzo, the forms of devotion and mercy towards the poor learn in the Sicilian seminaries. They were combined and completed, through intensive studies in sociology and economics, with criticism of the administrative and political structure of the island from liberal statism. The great thrust produced by Rerum Novarum is inspired by social life, already comes from Caltagirone, and an intense publicity (La Croce di Costantino) in a season in which the era was crossed by strong social struggles. Starting from the analysis of the new responsibilities of Catholics, Sturzo gradually became convinced that it was not necessary the effort produced in the administrations to build social democracy (according to the definition of Toniolo), based on a socio-centric model to oppose the model state-center of the Giolitti age and its consequences in the exclusion of the masses from the decision-making processes and the spread of corruption. Hence the idea of ​​proposing political political oppositions that are viewed in the state’s top institutions by the demands and the courage of politics (Caltagirone’s speech).