Background (up to 2021): Mirko Campoli was a religion teacher, vice-principal of a technical institute, educator, and leader of Catholic Action in Tivoli. On social media, there is still a video message of encouragement to the students of his school from the first COVID lockdown in March 2020.
Spring 2021: After the first serious accusations of sexual abuse against minors, Campoli resigned “for family and personal reasons” from the school and religious positions, in particular from that of president of the diocesan Catholic Action. However, as reported by several news outlets covering his case, he was also the (indeed!) national secretary of Azione Cattolica Ragazzi (ACR).
From 2021 to 2023: Campoli worked in a foster home, where he allegedly committed further abuse against minors and from which he was dismissed following the worsening of his legal situation.
May 2023: Campoli was arrested and Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, Archbishop of Bologna and president of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, responded to criticism by the Tivoli Prosecutor regarding the alleged lack of cooperation by ecclesiastical circles, particularly by the curia of Tivoli led by Bishop Mauro Parmeggiani, originally from Reggio Emilia (born 1961): “We do not accept accusations of a code of silence”.
March 2024: The Tivoli court sentenced Campoli to 9 years in prison for various abuses against minors committed between 2016 and 2021. During the trial, he pleaded guilty but claimed he acted due to depression. The prosecutor replied: “Depression is not cured with pedophilia”. The Campoli case was also covered by the well-known RAI program "Chi l’ha visto?" (later, in June, also by Mediaset’s "Fuori dal Coro": journalists questioned Bishop Parmeggiani, who even seemed to downplay the 9-year sentence). Meanwhile, a second trial for another series of abuses against minors was being prepared against him.
July 2024: Campoli earned a master’s degree at the Department of Humanities of Roma Tre University, defending on 3 July 2024 a thesis titled "Caro cardo salutis" (“The flesh is the hinge of salvation,” a quote from Tertullian) reflecting on the relationship between the body and the sacraments in Christianity. Meanwhile, the Tivoli Prosecutor’s Office prepared an appeal to the Supreme Court to overturn the 9-year sentence, considering it too lenient and requesting a harsher penalty: the appeal was filed on 15 July 2024.
August 2024: The newly-graduated and freshly-convicted Campoli applied to the DREST, the national PhD in religious studies founded and coordinated by Alberto Melloni (born in Reggio Emilia in 1959). This PhD has its administrative headquarters in Reggio Emilia at the Department of Education and Human Sciences of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia – a department of which Melloni was director (2020–2021) and is currently vice-director – and includes many other Italian universities and departments. Active since 2022, DREST offered 97 scholarships over its 38th and 39th national cycles (56 in 2022 and 41 in 2023), many funded through Italy’s PNRR funds, part of the EU’s post-pandemic recovery programme, but awarded only 66 due to a mix of few candidates, few eligible applicants, and many withdrawals, leaving 31 unassigned. For the 2024 call (40th national cycle), which closed on 26 July 2024, 30 scholarships worth €16,243/year each were offered. Thirteen of these required internships of up to 18 months at FSCIRE, where Melloni has been general secretary since 2007. Campoli passed the qualification stage with flying colors, being admitted to interviews (held online on 29–30 August 2024) in two of the six PhD areas. In one of them, he was even ranked first. However, he failed to achieve the minimum score in either interview and was thus excluded from the final ranking. In one area, had he reached the minimum score, he would have been awarded the scholarship because the number of eligible candidates was lower than the scholarships available.
September 2024: Coincidentally, on the same day the final DREST rankings were published, 11 September 2024, Campoli was sentenced to another 6 years and 10 months in the second trial for pedophilia, bringing his first-instance total to almost 16 years.
The very concrete danger avoided is reassuring. Yet it is astonishing how a former teacher, educator, and Catholic Action leader—convicted just in March for pedophilia, with another pending trial (later ending in another conviction), facing a prosecutorial appeal for a harsher sentence, presumably under house arrest in Tivoli and barred from places frequented by minors—could even imagine applying for a PhD in religious studies based in Reggio Emilia. And despite the gravity of the episode, this so-called national PhD programme in Religion Studies—touted as a flagship of academic excellence yet already plagued by an embarrassing number of unassigned scholarships—marched on as if nothing had happened. had happened. In certain lofty politico-theological circles, where Catholic and Waldensian perspectives meet in rare ecumenical harmony, the whole affair was neatly filed under “administrative trivia,” with serene confidence that the doctorate would sail on undisturbed—save, of course, for the minor inconvenience of reallocating one scholarship, i.e., of handing the money to someone else. It was, in every sense, a living lesson —or better, a capstone doctoral seminar— in The Theology of Bad Decisions.
