2008-11-26 13:17 Gramsci deathbed conversion 'false' No written proof that father of Italian Communism found God
(ANSA) - Cagliari, November 26 - A leading expert on Antonio Gramsci has rubbished recent claims that the renowned Marxist thinker and founder of Italy's Communist Party rediscovered his Catholic faith on his deathbed.
''The conversion of Antonio Gramsci to Catholicism is an old story, but it's never been proven by official documents - in fact they show it not to be true,'' said Giorgio Baratta, president of the International Gramsci Society in Italy.
Baratta said claims of Gramsci's last-minute conversion were first aired publicly in 1977 when an account of a nun who knew the philosopher was published.
Baratta stressed that letters from Gramsci's Russian sister-in-law Tatiana Schucht - who was close to him in the period leading up to his death - ''absolutely do not speak of this conversion''.
The president of the Gramsci Foundation Institute, Italian philosopher Beppe Vacca, has also expressed doubt over the conversion for the same reasons.
''There are many published and unpublished documents on the final hours and the death of Antonio Gramsci, and the theory of his conversion does not emerge from a single one,'' Vacca said. The fact that Schucht makes no mention of Gramsci's rediscovery of Catholicism in her letters is particularly significant, he added. ''These were intimate family letters in which an event of such importance would have come out''. On Tuesday a former Vatican official rekindled debate over whether Gramsci found God again just before he died in a Rome clinic in 1937 at the age of 46. ''Gramsci died having taken the sacraments. He returned to the faith of his childhood,'' said Luigi De Magistris, the former head of the Apostolic Penitentiary Tribunal. ''During his final illness, the nuns in the clinic where he was staying brought an image of the Baby Jesus to the patients to kiss. They didn't bring it to Gramsci. He said, 'Why didn't you bring it to me?' so then they did, and Gramsci kissed it''. A writer, philosopher and politician, Gramsci helped found the Communist Party in 1921 and was imprisoned in 1926 by Benito Mussolini's Fascist regime. Gramsci had suffered from ill-health since childhood and his condition worsened in jail, eventually leading to his release after a decade behind bars. He died shortly afterwards from a cerebral haemorrhage and was buried in Rome's non-Catholic cemetery.
Photo: Antonio Gramsci.
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