ABSTRACT
Many of the policies of the regime, and most importantly its unremitting hostility to Freemasonry, Socialism and Communism, suited the Church’s book exactly. Its destruction of the liberal democratic state was certainly not mourned by the majority of the Italian Catholic hierarchy, nor by some lay Catholics either, though significant minorities of both parochial clergy and laity remained Christian democratic at heart throughout. But as Fascism, after the success of the Ethiopian conquest and especially as it came increasingly under the influence exercised by Nazi Germany, moved towards more serious attempts to implement its totalitarian project, in particular the introduction of the Racial Laws, the underlying ideological differences between Catholicism and Fascism came to the surface. Mussolini’s increasing efforts to ‘sacralise’ politics, as part of a totalitarian reorganisation and regeneration of Italy and the creation of the ‘new’ Fascist man, by the adoption of credos, decalogues
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Conciliazione of 1929 of itself ensured that Fascism would have no victory over Italian Catholicism: the continued existence of Catholic Action ultimately made a mockery of Fascist totalitarian pretensions, and the very existence of the papacy as an essentially charismatic institution meant that even in that most characteristic of Fascist innovations, the cult of the Duce, Mussolini was challenged by a powerful rival.
