Reset Dialogues on Civilizations (Reset DOC) - the web magazine for all the tribes of the world. The author of this article (translated by Sonia Ter Hovanessian)   teaches Modern History at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart. His books include Il partito italiano (Laterza, 1997), L'Italia nel nuovo ordine mondiale. Politica ed economia dal 1945 al 1947 (Vita e Pensiero, 2000), Storia e globalizzazione (Laterza, 2003), and Il caso Moro. Una tragedia repubblicana (il Mulino, 2005). This article was published by the magazine Reset in its January-February 2008 issue (no.105) " As has been observed, for many years after the Risorgimento the Church and the State connected as opposing and competing institutions, while upon the spread of the notion of laicity in public institutions, there was not a strong secularization of society yet."