Democracy and Religions in Italy Beyond the Concordat and Agreements: Towards a Participatory Model

Forty years after the Villa Madama Agreement, which redefined relations between the Italian Republic and the Catholic Church, and the first agreement with the Waldensian Table, it has become necessary to reconsider the instruments governing the dialogue between the State and the religious denominations. The Italian constitutional framework, based on the dual model of concordats under Article 7 and agreements under Article 8(3), has generated a system of “necessary bilateralism” that, while historically justified, today reveals structural limitations. On the one hand, bilateral agreements have allowed minority denominations to emerge from legal invisibility and gain recognition, but they have also produced uniform “photocopy” models that rarely reflect the specific identity of each faith. On the other hand, unilateral state legislation, long advocated as a possible alternative, risks flattening the religious landscape and disregarding diversity. The challenge is therefore to imagine a “third way” that moves beyond the rigid opposition between unilateralism and bilateralism. This contribution proposes the use of participatory democracy as a legal and political tool for managing relations with religions. The central idea is that religions, as social actors with constitutionally protected interests, should be engaged in structured, multilateral dialogues convened by public authorities at both national, regional, and local levels. Such participation would not replace the current system of concordats and agreements but would complement it, providing more flexible and inclusive instruments to address issues of common interest in a pluralist society.