He was one of the main protagonists of the Italian Catholic movement; economist, sociologist and professor of political economy in several universities of the Land.

The economic thought was inspired by the analysis of a Medieval Florence: the cooperation between arts and crafts was intended as a bearer of harmony and civil coexistence. In 1989 he founded the Catholic Union of social studies in Padua through which he made known the contents of the social encyclical ”Rerum Novarum” by Pope Leone XIII, published in 1891, and the Catholic approach to the problems of poverty and oppression of the working class.

Famous is his sentence: “Proletarians of the whole world unite in Christ under the banner of the Church!” He wrote several works of economic history, texts regarding the Christian social program and concerning an analysis of the socialist movement on the rise.

We remember his “Trattato di Economia Social,” published between 1908 and 1921. Giuseppe Toniolo was beatified in 2012; for the occasion the volume “Per un miglior bene avvenire. Scritti scelti (1871-1900)” was published.