Montini a Milano. 1954-1963

Giovanni Battista Montini was a protagonist in the life of the Church and of Italy in the twentieth century. In his itinerary, the episcopate in Milan - from 1954 to 1963 - represents a crucial stage in the biography of the man who would become Pope Paul VI. The volume, on the basis of extensive documentation, reconstructs Montini's pastoral project in the years in which Milan, under the pressure of tumultuous modernization, experienced a profound socio-cultural transformation. The metropolis - where Catholic tradition and industrial civilization intertwined in an unprecedented way - posed the challenge of "irreligiosity", a new problem, to be addressed in a pastoral and not political key, as many continued to do, bringing the Church towards people and "distant" realities, starting with the factories and the many suburbs. Mission and "religious sense", "sympathy" towards contemporaries and the search for a new spiritual cohesion of society, constitute key elements of Montini's proposal. Aware of the European religious crisis, Montini also looked beyond Europe, developing in the years of the Second Vatican Council the conviction that the Church would carry out its mission only in a continuous and vital comparison with the different expressions of the contemporary world.