Communion and Liberation is widely known in Italy as a very important Catholic movement whose political power has been significantly increasing in the last fifteen years. It is an example of movement deeply rooted at the local level, where its activities range from grassroots meetings to business activities, to services provision.
In the sociological literature, CL has been studied either by focusing on its political ideology, or as a religious movement (often defined as fundamentalist). Introducing a specific focus on the political system allows to highlight the close relationships between the recent changes in the Italian political system and the reasons for CL local success. Indeed, it has been a process of mutual adaptation and influence. The political success of a Catholic movement in a Western democracy is relevant to understand the changing role of religion in the political arena. Christian movements can play a role of substitution of traditional political movement in countries where traditional parties became particularly weak and not capable of involving citizens. But the story of CL in Lombardia suggests also that something is changing in the relationship between national and local politics. CL is able of playing at different territorial horizons by using local, regional and national political spheres to promote their policies, mainly in the welfare sector. This is a huge signal of both a capacity of adaptation to a changing political system and of influencing these changes.
In this paper we focus on the relationships between CL and Italian politics in the Second Republic (1993-on going), by analysing CL representation of its political role as well as by pointing out the political opportunity structure in which its success took place.
