Santamaria, Bartholemew Augustine (Bob) (1915 - 1998)

Santamaria was educated at Christian Brothers schools and at the University of Melbourne where he studied arts and law. His parents ran a fruit shop in the Melbourne suburb of Brunswick. He rejected Marxism following the Spanish Civil War and joined the Campion Society.

In 1936 he was prominent in helping establish the Catholic Worker newspaper and in 1937 joined the National Secretariat of Catholic Action, producing many social and political statements for them. A strong opponent of communism in trade unions, he formed the Catholic Social Studies Movement (the Movement). He was the Movement's president from 1943-7 and of its successor, the National Civic Council, from 1957.

A brilliant orator and prolific writer, he was instrumental in the ALP split in the 1950s when the DLP was formed in opposition and spent his final years championing traditional family and religious values and enlarging on his theory that democracy and Australia's economic independence were threatened more by capitalism than communism.

[Brief Biography compiled by Robin Hammond, January/February 2004]