Giorgia Meloni’s far-right government in Italy has revived a national holiday in honour of the country’s popular patron saint, Francis of Assisi, in a nod to “the very core of our nation’s identity”.
Millions of Italian workers are expected to get a day off each 4 October, the feast day of Saint Francis, after the lower house of parliament approved overwhelmingly a bill making it a public holiday. The measure will pass to the senate for the final nod.
Saint Francis of Assisi, a 13th-century friar who renounced a life of luxury to help the poor, was an Italian mystic and poet who founded the Franciscan religious order.
He was canonised in 1228, two years after his death at the age of 44, and was declared Italy’s patron saint by Pope Pius XII in 1939.
The saint, who was born and is buried in the Umbrian town of the same name, was given a public holiday in 1958, during Italy’s postwar economic boom, before it was scrapped from the calendar in 1977 due to austerity measures.
Meloni’s government’s bill said the public holiday would be a tribute to the saint’s dedication to “peace, brotherhood, the protection of the environment and solidarity”.
Amid concerns about the financial cost of an extra public day off, Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party, which has neofascist roots, said the move was “neither a waste nor a whim of the majority”.
“It’s a question of identity,” Lorenzo Malagola, a Brothers of Italy politician, said in a statement posted on the party’s website. “It means restoring to the public sphere a pillar of our collective memory.”
Meloni has campaigned on a platform to promote the traditional family, consistent with Catholic values. In a 2019 speech, she said: “We will defend our identity. I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian and I am Christian. You will never take that from me!”
In the party’s statement, Malagola added: “This is not just about adding another holiday to the calendar – it’s a choice that touches the very core of our nation’s identity. Saint Francis isn’t just part of religious history, he is an integral part of our civil history.”
The public holiday was first suggested by Davide Rondoni, a poet and the president of the committee tasked with organising events to mark next year’s 800th anniversary since Saint Francis’s death.
