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Dearest Brethren,
Welcome to the First Communication of the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy.
This communication also coincides with the third year of my Office as Grand Master and for this reason, I have considered it opportune to make a brief balance of what the Board of General Purposes, the Regional Grand Masters, the Worshipful Masters, who have alternated themselves in the single Lodges, and I have completed.
For this occasion, I have wanted to extend the invitation to the foreign delegations whose presence here today honours us. These delegations are Freemasonry's titled Bodies and today they are represented by their Grand Masters or by High Rank Grand Lodge Officers, to whom I am also bound by close friendship.
On the day I was installed in office, I said that the creation of a traditional, Anglo-Saxon style Masonic Body on the Italian territory, having the peculiarities and characteristics that every one recognizes us, both in a positive and negative way, would be a demanding and delicate question. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons and vicissitudes, during the first nine years of its existence the Regular Grand Lodge of Italy did not succeed in exploiting the great potentialities which derived from its being the sole Italian Masonic Body, recognized by the most important traditional
Grand Lodges.
The number of international recognitions obtained from the time of its foundation was indeed inferior to initial expectations and the number of the Lodges needed to be increased.
I marked my project starting with an urgent administrative reinforcement of the Body and we succeeded in obtaining this thanks to the attentive and accurate work of the Grand Secretary Sergio Facchini.
The Board of General Purposes worked actively at the review of the Constitutions and their subsequent publication.
The Commissione Araldica (Heraldic Committee), presided over by the Deputy Grand Master Nerio Pantaleoni, has gotten ready an organic distribution of the honours of our Body, dividing them in the Order of the Cornerstone of 1° and 2° degree and in that of the Flaming Star.
The organization of the Annual Grand Lodge Communications has reached an excellent level, thanks to the care of the Grand Director of Ceremonies, of his Deputy, and also to the all staff of Assistants, Masters of Ceremonies and Stuarts.
Our Internet website has been reorganized and improved both aesthetically and operatively, with a new graphic design, by RW Bro. Bruno Gazzo.
The necessity of reorganizing the website and its importance as a tool to spread our news has been confirmed by the great number of hits and inquiries on said site.
Our Review, De Hominis Dignitate, which I have founded five years ago, is our pride and joy and I think that among Masonic publications it can rightly occupy a position of the highest order. Especially for the latest version, I drew inspiration from the Italian historical reviews of the early twentieth century. I am referring to wide-ranging reviews such as Leonardo, La Voce, L'Acerba, Novecento, all of them having unforgettable editors as Giovanni Papini, Ardengo Soffici, Giuseppe Prezzolini, and Massimo Bontempelli.
In De Hominis Dignitate we shall have as guests different kinds of writers since, in my opinion, when we speak about Masonic culture we speak about culture tout court, that is about the many-sided aspects of culture when interpreted in the light of the principles of Freemasonry.
In the review we can find the transactions of two years work of the Research Lodge Quattuor Coronati, Lodge that I have strongly wanted and in which major historians of the world of Masonic studies have participated.
My conferences at important international Masonic Research Centres, such as the Cornerstone Society and the awarding of a scholarship at the Centre for Research into Freemasonry, Sheffield University, have permitted us to be appreciated by people who do not know us or our commitment.
There is a most frequent question asked by journalists who wish to write about our Body and understand the differences among the other irregular Masonic Bodies on the territory, question also asked by non-Masons who are interested in joining our reality. The question is how it is possible to affect society if we only limit ourselves to publish cultural reviews or to establish Research Lodges (as, for example, our Santa Cecilia Lodge, exclusively made up of musicians).
Before answering this question, it would be necessary to agree on a fundamental point: which are the purposes of a Masonic Body and, most of all, what its Grand Master represents.
In Italy, unfortunately, Freemasonry has always historically represented, in the collective imagination, a hidden power. The P2 Lodge event certainly has not contributed to change the opinion of those who shared this opinion.
More and more frequently we read interviews given by the Grand Masters of other Italian irregular Bodies. In these interviews they dispense advice even to the United Nations Organization, on how this organization should be reformed and so on. This is incredible. A few weeks ago the same Body sided with the referendum on assisted procreation, in marked contrast with the Catholic Church. This is not the first time. But this is a subject that needs quite another space.
In the public opinion, all this has created the erroneous conviction that a Masonic Body must express itself "apertis verbis" on all social problems in which political parties are regularly involved. This is not so.
Starting from the conviction that Freemasonry will not change the destiny of mankind, we of the GLRI have more modest goals, since we are convinced that the field in which a Masonic Body can operate is exclusively that of Charity, field in which GLRI has invested 31.000 Euros during the past years.
Let us see how.
A few weeks ago, I met the Dean of the Lutheran Church in Italy. On this occasion I have personally given to this Lutheran Church a contribution for a children's hospital in a depressed area near Naples. The meeting was pleasant, also in virtue of the Dean's open-mindedness and cultural background. He well knew and appreciated the initiatives and principles of Freemasonry.
Another field I have considered important is that of sports. When we speak about sports, we immediately think about the billionaire football stars; these are a bad example for fathers and children who are forced to undertake this sport hoping, most of the times in vain, to have a potential football wonder.
The social importance of the so called "minor" sports is often forgotten, and we also forget about their role as a social catalyst for those some times "depressed" areas, in which such "minor sports" rescue many young people from drugs and organized crime.
This is the reason why this year we have contributed to the sponsorship of a Premier League women's Handball Team in Nuoro (Sardinia), a place in which such a reality has its undoubtable importance.
On the basis of these conditions, last year, on the occasion of the Annual Report of EURISPES, that has decided to publish the results of a research on the world of Freemasonry in Italy, we have had the gratifying surprise to be considered, on the national territory, the "Politically Correct" Freemasonry, compared to another irregular Body defined "opinion party".
The active Lodges of GLRI are currently 130 and in these three years we have established, or pulled up again, 40 Lodges. This is more than a Lodge a month.
For years, malicious gossip spread the news of a Freemasonry having not more than two hundred brethren. In a short time the Lodges will amount to two hundred. Lies soon catch up with you.
With these premises, recognitions could not lack. From April 2002, the year of my taking office, until today, GLRI has obtained 40 International Recognitions. For the first time in the Italian history of Freemasonry, we have had the recognitions of two prestigious Scandinavian Lodges, the Grand Lodge of Norway and the Grand Lodge of Finland, which today for the first time honour us by their presence.
The historic Grand Lodge of Cuba, present today for the first time in Italy, the South American Grand Lodges of Peru, Ecuador, Paraguay, the Grand Lodge of South Australia and the Northern Territory, eleven United States MW Prince Hall Grand Lodges, the young Lodges of Estonia, Madagascar, and so on.
Moreover, we had the great honour to have participated in the foundation of the Sovereign Grand Lodge of Malta, whose Grand Master is present today, and of the Supreme Grand Chapter of the Grand Orient of Brazil, in Rio de Janeiro.
I would like to finish my address going briefly back on the relationship between Freemasonry and Catholic Church. If we examine the documents at our disposal and if we make an excursus on the contrasts and on the assumed incompatibility between the Catholic Church and Freemasonry, we have the impression to find ourselves in the presence of a disquieting comedy of errors.
The documents of the Holy See are often based on Masonic realities that we consider "Irregular", therefore not representative of the real Masonic tradition. Which are the rituals examined and considered paradigmatic of the Masonic thought are not exactly known, but this does not seem a question of minor importance, since we know that the rituals can substantially change from Body to Body. In the first chapter of the book "Freemasonry", by Zbigniew Suchecki, professor at the Pontificia Università Lateranense, book published by the Libreria Editrice Vaticana, we read: "During the past century, the Grand Orient of France and the Grand Orient of Italy were among the most anticlerical
Masonic Bodies in the world". We hope that in the future those Bodies that historically represent the Anglo-Saxon Masonic Tradition will be chosen as a paradigm.
On the other hand, when a slight opening has been made, this opening has not been conducted with intelligence and common sense. I am referring to the Canone 2335 of the Canon Law Code of 1917 which, under this Canone, had imposed a sanction only on Catholics who were enrolled as members of associations that effectively MACHINANTUR CONTRA ECCLESIAM, that is "plot against the Church".
Both the Italian Masonic Bodies and some Masonic scholars organic to such Bodies have coarsely managed this opening, so that the Bodies took the opportunity to crow over the presumed obscurantism of some leading exponents of the Catholic Church.
And the Catholic Church punctually took a step backwards.
In my next address I shall list the documents at our disposal and I shall show how, in my humble opinion, perspectives for future approaches are really possible.
We have always referred to the Holy See with great respect even calling a Lodge Enea Silvio Piccolomini, that is Pope Pio II. And this happened whilst some brethren where studying Renaissance history. This is the only case in the history of Freemasonry.
In conclusion, if we compare the thirteen years that have passed from our foundation to the three centuries of the British and Irish Lodges we realize how young we are, therefore when a Freemason Body is growing and stabilizing, each Grand Lodge meeting is to be considered "founding".
I would like to finish my address appointing a Grand Officer who will probably remain not only in the history of Italian Freemasonry but also in the history of the world's Freemasonry and I do not think I am wrong. The Grand Officer I am appointing as Grand Chaplain is a priest of the Roman Catholic Church and once again I say of the Roman Catholic Church.
The Regular Grand Lodge of Italy and its Grand Master make, with this act, a gesture of opening. Never has a
Masonic Body made such a significant act towards the Roman Catholic Church, dissociating itself from the other irregular Masonic Bodies who, with their anticlericalism, have caused so much damage and harm to the image of worldwide Freemasonry.
We have played our role and we are awaiting for the Church to find the grounds and the patience to be acquainted with the peculiarities and the differences within the variegated world of Freemasonry.
The Grand Master
The Most Worshipful Bro. Fabio Venzi
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