A lay association as a client: an unsuccessful architectural competition, between Italian politics and Vatican palace conspiracies (1952-53)

Research into the Italian Liturgical Movement emphasised the pedagogical commitment of lay associations, rather than architectural innovation they eventually promoted. The case study presented here discusses a little-known case of ambitious architectural patronage promoted in 1952-53 by the main Italian lay association: the Italian Youth of Catholic Action (Gioventù di Azione Cattolica, GiAC). The winning design by architect Enzo Magnani, the first president of the Catholic Union of Italian Artists (UCAI), was rejected directly by Pius XII, probably as an indirect consequence of the worsening of the political fracture between the GiAC and the main branches of the Azione Cattolica, oriented towards explicit support for conservative and clericalist political positions, rather than ecclesial engagment and liturgical afflatus. The archives of Azione Cattolica Italiana (preserved by ISACEM in Rome) and some private archives allow a first reconstruction of the matter, which had been completely erased from the asssociation’s official history, and probably broke any possible link between associative patronage and liturgical architecture during the decades that followed.