CHURCH AND TOTALITARIANISM: THE 1936-1939 SPANISH CASE

Assuming the latest historiographical debate concerning the attitude of the Catholic Church toward totalitarianisms during the years between the two Wars and the new documentation coming from the Archivo Goma and the Archivo Segreto Vaticano, this article questions the assessment given from a certain historiography that so much insisted on the anti-totalitarian role played by the Spanish Church during the Civil War. As Goma's reports and Vatican Charge d'affaires', Nuncio's and other churchmen's correspondence prove, although there was a strong preoccupation for the influence of Nazism, the same did not happen for Italian Fascism. Indeed, the Hierarchy used a concept of totalitarianism that was regarded compatible with Catholicism and accepted laws and policies oriented towards the building of a totalitarian Catholic State.