ALLE ORIGINI DEGLI ARTICOLI 7 E 8 DELLA COSTITUZIONE DEL 1948

The explicit reference in the Constitution of the Republic to the Lateran Pacts of 1929 has democratically frozen the structure given by the fascist regime to the relations of the State with the Catholic Church and with those then called "admitted cults". Beyond the articulated and rich debates of the Constituent on what will become the art. 7 of the 1948 Charter, and of the "values" conveyed by the different political forces, this contribution tends to shed light, especially in terms of the hierarchy of normative sources, on some "precedents" dating back to the colonial law of the Twenties and Thirties, to the constitutional project of the Mussolini regime in 1940, to the draft Statute of the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in 1944-1945, and to the constitutional model developed by King Vittorio Emanuele III in November 1945. If we refer to the well-known thesis of Benedetto Croce according to which the twenty years of fascism would have been only a "parenthesis" in the history of Italy, it must be recognized that with regard to the position of religion and the Catholic Church the "parenthesis" opened with the Statute of Carlo Alberto of 1848 ("Catholic religion is the only religion of the State") was closed only in 1984 with the Italy-Holy See Agreement, that declares no longer in force this principle that had been recalled in the Lateran Pacts of 1929.