"A popular explanation is one that was offered by Rudolph Vecoli, a left-leaning historian, in 1968. In an article published in the Journal of Social History, Vecoli claimed that southern Italians were deeply anticlerical and thus had little interest in attending Masses and other priest-run services. Instead, the peasantry expressed its spirituality on its own terms.

"Vecoli blamed the clergy for the anticlericalism that allegedly pervaded the South. He claimed that the priests allied themselves with the landowning class and showed little sympathy for poor tenant farmers. Other writers have made a related claim: the clergy shared the views of the reactionary landlords and did all that it could to thwart the nationalist aspirations of the Italian people".

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Fonte: Magna Grece