The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1908-10-17
CATHOLIC WOMEN OF ITALY.

Thosew no have followed at all close
ly the development of events in Italy
will testify to the very marked in
| crease in recent years of <ocial and
religious activity, more especially in
| thee tiles of the north. A voCt number
of new works of every kind have been
established; a great impetus has been
given by women of the upper classes
| to the revival of the peasant industries
for which Italy in the past has been
so famous, such as lace-making, straw
plating and the beautiful drawn linen
thread work; much has been done to
open up new careers for girls as well
as to improve their domestic and in
dustrial training; an effort is at length
being made to provide skilled nursing
for the sick, and, in a general way.
more intellectual appreciation is being
shown of both the moral and material
needs of the working classes. The
splendid work due to the initiative
of Mgr. Bonomell, bishop of Cremona,
on behalf of Italian emigrants of the
NAVY class, for whose spiritual and
educational welfare no one had labored,
and in which women have taken their
share. is but one example of the new
progressive spirit that is informing
Italian philanthropic endeavor. An
other is afforded by the growing inn
portance of the Italian sections of the
international declarations for the aboli-
ton of state-aided vice, and the in
famous white slave traffic. Indeed,
one has only to look through the pages
of the new illustrated magazine for
women, the Vita Feminine Italiana,
which, in spite of certain tendencies
one must deplore, possesses many adj
mirable and useful features, to realize
with how much vitality womens work
is endowed and how varied and nu-
merous are the fresh departures that
every month seems to bring forth.
AT thep resent time, too. a new Cir
colo Femminile di Coltura or study
circle is being organized by Catholic
women in Rome, with the express
sanction of the Holy Father. To qlZEte
from the preliminary program, it is
being started lin response to the wishes
of many Catholic women who have re-
manned hitherto outside the social fem
mint movement. but who now realize
he duty of taking part in 1t in an eff
fective manner The Circolo aims at
uniting all the sober energies of those
women who wish to defend and sup
port the principles of Christian faith
and morality and to participate on an
intellectual basis in the social move
ment of our day The organizing
committee includes many we'll known
Roman patrician names, and it is
hoped that the Circolo will open It's
doors next November with full course
of lectures divided into three sections,
the religious. the social and the legal.
The Roman ladies are clearly begin
ming in the right way, by educating
themselves, and this new organization,
should it prove successful. may exert
very real influence over the destinies of
the women of Italy.
Another hopeful sign is the improve
ment in girls education. 1t seems
strange that in Italy it should everi
have fallen upon evil days and have
grown both cramped and superficial.
when it is remembered that in the past
the women of Italy have been the most
learned in Europe, and that lecture
halls and university honors and pro-
fessorial chairs were open to them
long before their sisters of nortA4ra
Europe had even dreamt of knocking
at college doors. Moreover, some of
the most learned women that Italy has
been delighted to honor have also been
the most devout: witness Elena Luz
crezia Cornaro Piscopia, who con-
versed in seven languages, and took
her degree at Padua in philosophy and
theology and followed the rule of ST
Benedict in her fathers hoWye: or the
later Maria Gaetana Agnes, who was
urged by Pope Benedict XIV to accept
mathematical professorship at b.
logna, but who relinquished her pub
lie career in order to devote herself to
the poor of Milan. No one in their
day ventured to assert that learning in
a woman was incompatible with true
piety, or that public lectming was in
any way destructive of feminine mod
esty. 1t was the sinister influence of
the French revolution, with its rever-
sion to the theories and ideals of an