Luigi Giussani and US Funding

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Communion and Liberation never received United States Funding. However…

In The Life of Luigi Giussani (first published 2013), Savorona has a section on “The allegations of CIA financing” (540-545):

”On 14 February 1976 La Stampa and il manifesto, both daily newspapers, printed stories about an Italian organization created by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and identified the organization as Communion and Liberation. It would take years for the story to be retracted as entirely lacking in any factual foundation.”

The section continues by discussing the violence which was directed at CL because of these stories. Apparently, the source of the allegations was The Pike Report, produced by the US House Select Committee on Intelligence. For example, this is an excerpt from page xiii of the leaked report:

“In-depth analyses appear in the Select Committee's report of three major covert action projects, each of great interest. Intervention in italian elections since 1948 cost the CIA $75 million, including $10 million spent in 1972 alone. Most of this money went to the Christian Democrats, although Ambassador Graham Martin obtained, over the CIA's objection, a donation of $800,000 in 1972 for political forces of the Italian neo-fascist movement. The Ambassador insisted on the donation in order ‘to demonstrate solidarity for the long pull’. Underlining the CIA's intervention in Italy was the revelation, in early 1976, from government sources other than the Select Committee, that President Ford had approved in December 1975 in the Italian electoral process during the months preceding the next Italian elections. (At the time of approval it was not known that elections would be held as soon as June 1976.)”

(The Pike Report, xiii)

When interviewed for the weekly paper, L’esspreso, Giussani characterized the stories in this way:

“Slander; all of it slander. It’s all part of the game of attack and discredit, the primary blame for which goes to the secular-bourgeois press. Do you really think we could have taken money from the CIA?”

[…]

“The whole story was made up out of whole cloth by La Stampa of Turin. In the Pike document there is an extremely vague mention of some funding given to an Italian organization between 1969 and 1972. We were not even off the ground yet during that time”

The Kissinger Cables and Luigi Giussani

“7. IN RESPONSE TO THE CONSUL GENERAL'S QUESTIONS AS TO HOW THE US COULD HELP THIS NEW CONTRIBUTION TO ITALIAN DEMOCRACY, GIUSSANI SAID THAT WE COULD HELP MUP [Popular Movement (Italy) - Wikipedia]. C&L SPECIFICALLY DOES NOT NEED ASSISTANCE, BUT WE COULD BE HELPFUL IN ASSITING WITH THE FOUNDING OF THE PUBLIC MEDIA INSTITUTIONS DESCRIBED ABOVE.” (WikiLeaks: MOVIMENTO UNITARIO POPOLARE; COMUNIONE E LIBERAZIONE, December 19, 1975)

According to WikiLeaks, this document was declassified/released in 2006 and posted to WikiLeaks in 2013. It was a telegram from the Office of the Consul General in Milan to the US State Department.

Giussani always insisted on a strict separation between cultural initiatives like ‘media institutions’ and the Popular Movement and the movement of Communion and Liberation. With such a clear separation, it would be straightforward to deny funding received by CL.

In The Life of Luigi Giussani, Savorana summarizes Giussani’s distinction:

Because of this confusion [CL and the Popular Movement], in early 1977 Giussani dedicated a long talk to re-clarifying the nature and purposes of CL, addressed to the leaders of the movement. They differed greatly, he insisted, from the nature and the purpose of the Popular Movement. The two had to be kept distinct: the former was an educational setting, and the second a free initiative undertaken by adults. He said, too, that the MP was the test of the CL education, the assessment, that is, of whether the movement was capable of forming individuals able to take on personal responsibility in society” (545).

While Savorana does not discuss this 1975 meeting, it was widely known only in 2013, the same year that The Life of Luigi Giussani was published.

TL;DR Did CL get financing from the US government?

Not directly, but Giussani recommended funds to support the Popular Movement and media initiatives run by people in CL.