Between 2017 and 2020, a three-year research project titled Religious Inclusion and Exclusion in the Catholic World of Europe and America was carried out in collaboration with the University of Roma Tre, the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, and the University of Chile. This project is part of a long-standing Italian-Chilean collaboration, which,  since 2007, has focused on three major triennial projects developed through a series of seminar meetings, resulting in the publication of three volumes in both Italy and Chile.

The proceedings of the most recent three seminars on the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion, organised between Rome and Santiago from 2018 to 2020, are currently in press in Chile by Editorial Universitaria. The book, titled Inclusión y exclusión religiosa en Europa y América (Religious Inclusion and Exclusion in Europe and America), is edited by an editorial committee comprising members from the three universities involved in the project: Celia Cussen (University of Chile), Maria Lupi (University of Roma Tre), and Claudio Rolle (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile). The forthcoming publication offers an opportunity to reflect on the project’s central theme, with particular emphasis on the final seminar held in Rome at the Department of Humanities of the University of Roma Tre. This seminar, in which I participated directly, centred on the theme Inclusion and Exclusion: Practices of Acceptance and Experiences of Religious Marginalisation in Europe and Spanish America.

This seminar addressed historical issues related to the complex and often contradictory dynamics of inclusion and exclusion,  both within religious orders and in the missionary context of Catholicism in the Spanish kingdoms in Latin America. It demonstrated the pervasiveness of certain themes and issues that resonate not only within that specific geopolitical context but also in our contemporary times.

The seminar was characterised by two particularly significant aspects. On the one hand, it had a diachronic structure, featuring a succession of contributions covering a wide chronological span—from antiquity, such as Federica Candido’s presentation on The Choice of Virginity and Freedom of Movement for Women of the Empire between the 3rd and 4th Centuries: Some Reflections Starting from the Categories of Inclusion and Exclusion, to the contemporary period, with Matteo Mennini’s intervention on LGBT Catholic Groups in Italy: Sources and Research HypothesesOn the other hand, the papers were notable for their broad conceptualisation of inclusion and exclusion, extending beyond the category of people.

Most of the contributions addressed processes of inclusion and exclusion relating to human groups, variously defined through the lens of religious affiliation. Some authors focused on inclusion and exclusion within religious orders - both the Mendicant Orders (Maria Teresa Dolso, Emanuele Carletti, Anne Joyeux), the Jesuits (Luigi Guarneri Calò Carducci, Bernarda Urrejola), and the monasteries of the Conceptionist nuns (Diana Barreto) - as well as within the context of Judeo-Portuguese communities (Citlalli Domínguez). In certain cases, the narrative centred on individual figures presented as emblematic. Guarneri Calò Carducci, for instance, examined A Controversial Case of Exclusion in the Society of Jesus in Peru at the End of the 16th Century," traces the story of the mestizo Jesuit Blas Valera, who was investigated by the order. His case reveals the contested status of mestizos in the Society of Jesus and thus serves as a powerful illustration of the challenges surrounding 'mestizo' vocations. Urrejola, through the lens of a specific event - the pro-Jesuit policy of a bishop in Chile in the second half of the 18th century - also examined the expulsion of the Jesuits from the Spanish kingdoms (including those overseas) in 1767, a measure that served as a prelude to the suppression of the order a few years later.

Although the majority of contributors concentrated on the inclusion and exclusion of groups and individuals, the dialectic was also extended to other domains, including texts and collective memory. This was clearly demonstrated in the presentations of Filippo Sedda (Liturgy and History: An Inclusive Synergy Between Space, Time, Gesture, Sign, and Word) and Giandomenico Ferrazza (Nefandi Graeci, Nefandissimi Langobardi: The Construction of the 'Other' in the Ideology of the Early Medieval Papacy). The former emphasised the various components of the liturgy - space, word, gesture, sign, time - which make it a tool of profound communication, comparable to preaching. It was presented as a medium capable of uniting the oral and written dimensions, while simultaneously including and excluding specific groups within defined spatial and temporal contexts. The latter highlighted the limitations, in the context of medieval Europe, of the historiographical paradigm that separates Western and Byzantine civilisation, a paradigm shaped by narratives seeking to expunge or exclude the memory of Greek popes from the papal tradition, both religiously and politically.

As already noted, the chronological scope of the contributions spanned a broad period, from the early centuries to contemporary times. However, the majority of contributors focused on the modern era, examining events related to Latin American countries, as seen not only in the aforementioned essays by Guarnieri Calò Carducci, Joyeux, Barreto, Domínguez, Urrejola, but also in those by Gaune Corradi, Sergio Botta, and Lucrecia Enríquez. Some authors explored the theme of mission (Corradi, Botta), in its dual religious and political profile, in its relations with Rome (questioning the terms in which the Roman clergy perceived the problems of missions, but also noting how Latin American Catholicism did not look to Rome as its 'centre' and fulcrum of action), emphasising the universalistic dimension of the mission that necessarily confronts the particularism of individual missions, in which Catholic missionaries found themselves having to 'conquer' times and spaces; together, the missions, particularly the Franciscan ones at the centre of Botta's essay, emerge as a place of mediation, with missionaries in some way fundamental 'agents' of 'Westernisation' of the indigenous world, able to establish spaces of dialogue and inclusion even on the complex terrain of indigenous idolatry. In the religious policy of Catholicism, Indigenous peoples have been the subject of complex and non-linear reflections and processes of inclusion and exclusion, beginning with the problematic recognition of the Other.