Alle origini del neoatlantismo. Il dibattito cattolico sul Mediterraneo nel secondo dopoguerra

The essay aims at reconstructing the cultural foundations of Neo-Atlantism, a peculiar phase of post-war Italian foreign policy that coincided with the attempt to reconcile the Atlantic bond with a renewed protagonism in the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern quadrant, in the framework of the decolonisation processes that in the mid-1950s were leading to a retreat of Franco-British positions in the region. The analysis dwells on the visions of the Mediterranean – understood as a space of civilisation and as a bridge between the West, North Africa and the Levant – that innervated the reflection of Italian Catholicism from the immediate post-war period to the end of the 1950s. The related debate is reconstructed here mainly from the perusal of some of the most important cultural journals of the Catholic area of the time.