Vescovo in una città che cambia: Montini a Milano

With the unexpected appointment of Giovanni Battista Montini as archbishop of Milan, the meeting began between one of the main Church personalities and a great industrial metropolis in profound transformation for the "economic boom". The archbishop immediately warned that, despite the town's entrenched Catholic tradition, Milan was hit by a great "religious question": the removal of the masses from the faith. For Montini it was necessary to renew the pastoral care to restore a religious sense both to "distant" strangers to the life of the parishes and to the faithful "neighbors" but turned in a bourgeois Christianity. The City Mission of 1957 in this sense represented a relevant event. Milan was considered a "mission land" to the warmed Catholics and the working masses of the suburbs, to immigrants from southern Italy and the "low" peasants.