"La propaganda dell'errore non si combatte se non mediante la propagazione della verità". L'Opera Nazionale per la Buona Stampa e la Grande Guerra (1915-1918)

In March 1915 the Holy See decided to implement a proposal by the Archbishop of Pisa Pietro Maffi and as a result established the Opera Nazionale per la Buona Stampa («National Agency for the “Good Press»). The charter of the organization stated that the institution’s aim was both to support the Catholic press throughout Italy and simultaneously to oppose the circulation of “evil” media content (especially that disseminated by liberal, socialist and anticlerical media). Yet the eruption of the First World War ended up seriously subverting the efforts and aims of the Opera – right up to 1918. But this essay also argues that the war also generated unprecedented conditions for the reimagining of the Opera and its work in terms of a novel rhetoric of war. The new rhetoric of war the Opera embraced described the “good press” as a mighty weapon, a vehicle of truth and morality, and the instrument of a new evangelization which had to contribute to the victorious resolution of the war and nourish the religious “awakening” produced by the conflict, understood as the first step to a peacetime corresponding to the emergence of a new Christian social order, and the fulfilment of the social reign of Christ.