Il fattore confessionale nel processo d’indipendenza dell’Uganda (1958-1969)

The case of Uganda, passed to independence in 1962, appears to be relevant to the efforts of Catholics to influence the political process for building a democratic regime. Unlike in Europe, where the Christian Democratic Movement, since the Second World War, had known a significant development with the formation of solid parties emerging outside ecclesiastical and confessional ambitions, in Uganda the attempt to form an indigenous leadership and to form a party "aconfessional" - the Democratic Party - inspired by the "International Dc" as a model of political participation, was overwhelmed by the authoritarian drift. Its epilogue showed the impossibility of the Democratic-Christian model and of a new relationship between religion and politics: the "aconfessional" character with which the Catholic party meant to increase consensus among elements of different confessions and ethnicities and contribute to a process of national unification, appeared too weak in a context of strong confessionalization of ethnic-political conflicts.