The political action of the Catholic political movement in Eastern Friuli developed within a perspective of loyalty to the Austrian state and constant demands for strong local autonomy, in a multilingual province and in opposition to the local Italian liberals. The two deputies Bugatto and Faidutti were constantly committed to the territory and its people, also in collaboration with other Italian deputies in Vienna. In the final days of Austria-Hungary, this resulted in an ill-advised endorsement of Emperor Charles’s belated manifesto, with a view to supporting the people’s desire for self-determination in institutional matters, even in the face of the Empire’s obvious dissolution, a choice that would have negative consequences for Friulian Catholics politics in the post-war period.
