Corpo e anima: sport e modello virile nella formazione dei giovani fascisti e dei giovani cattolici nell'Italia degli anni Trenta

During the Fascist regime, apart from the totalitarian organizations, the Italian Catholic Action was the only one mass association allowed to lead its own activities and to set up its own youth pedagogical path, manly model and sport education. The «Grande Pedagogo» used the myth of war and the fascination of sport to create the ideal warrior. Church tried to present its own manly model, inspired by the Catholic tradition and faithful to Christian values. This «apostle of love» couldn’t, however, totally refuse the physical and spiritual ideal of the Fascist «new Italian». The characteristics of the manly model which prevailed during the Thirties presented some cultural aspects of the inheritance common to both Catholics and Fascist. Only from 1938, when the harmony between Church and Fascist State broke, young Catholics seemed to undress their warrior uniforms. Nevertheless it’s undeniable that, till then, the model proposed by the Fascist movement, based on war, sport and moral perfection, seemed to have such an attraction that anyone couldn’t escape.;

Alessio Ponzio, Corpo e anima: sport e modello virile nella formazione dei giovani fascisti e dei giovani cattolici nell'Italia degli anni Trenta in "MONDO CONTEMPORANEO" 3/2005, pp , DOI: