Appendix III - The September Accords, 1931

Summary

1. The Azione Cattolica Italiana is essentially diocesan and is strictly dependent upon the Bishops, who choose the directors, both ecclesiastical and lay. There cannot in future be chosen as directors men who belonged in the past to parties hostile to the regime. In harmony with its ends of a religious and spiritual order, the Azione Cattolica does not interfere in any way in politics, and in the external forms of its organisations holds itself aloof from everything that is proper to and traditional in political parties. The flag of the local associations of the Azione Cattolica will be the national flag.

2. The Azione Cattolica does not include in its programme the constitution of professional associations and trade unions; consequently it does not set before itself any tasks of a trade union order. Its internal professional sections, already now existing and governed by the law of April 3, 1926, are formed for exclusively spiritual and religious purposes, and they propose further to contribute to the result that the trade unions juridically recognised may respond ever better to the principle of collaboration between the classes and to the social and national ends which, in a Catholic country, the State with its existing organisations proposes to attain.

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