Mussolini and the Church
During the outbreak of World War I, Italy remained a neutral state, many socialists including Benito Mussolini at the time believed that war was imperialistic and contrary to working class interests. The Italian government intrigued by the territorial lands they would acquire through the treaty of London agreed to ally themselves with Russia, Great Britain, and France. As the country prepared for war, Mussolini changed his stance and supported the call to war initiative, his reversal was justified in the belief that wartime chaos would spark a revolution and encourage nationalistic feelings amongst the citizenry. Feelings he could capitalize on. Such thoughts subsequently earned him dismal from the Italian Socialist Party. When the war concluded in November 1918, Mussolini sympathized with the nation's hundreds of thousands of war veterans, many of whom were unemployed and dissatisfied with the liberal Italian state. To rouse their support, Mussolini established a political movement called the Fasci Italiani di Combattimento members of this movement came to be known as Fascists. Initially, youth were organized into armed squads in order to defend Fascist rallies. Later on, these squads would be used to attack
But the biggest problem which nearly threw out negotiations concerned the future of Catholic youth organizations. and disrupt the rallies of rival political factions such as the socialists. The Vatican was adamant that a section be added to the agreement which forbade all excommunicated clergy from holding public office which angered Italians, and its suggested amendments on marriage were outlandish that Mussolini rejected them up until the last moment. When Italy unified it began setting its affairs in order by permitting freedom of speech and religion and secularizing education and the press The Church fought adamantly against liberalism calling such ideals sinful, those partied to it were cursed for eternity. At first the government wanted to hold out on the issue of territorial sovereignty in the hopes of presenting an unambiguous interpretation of that status as defined in the Law of Guarantees but was convinced by Church legal authorities that for the Holy See territorial sovereignty was the central component of the entire settlement. Since October 1923, Mussolini's policy toward the Church had been to propose a reform of Italy's ecclesiastical legislation. Religion seemed to have become an institution to be exploited, to control the state but to also be expose in the territorial race amongst rivals. It was stressed that with the acquisition of the Middle East and Africa would put Italy in a position of stature and importance at France's expense due to the relationship with the Vatican. However, given the sheer size and complexity of the Catholic popular party, it was difficult to entice the party to co-operate with Mussolini especially with splinter groups such as the Unione Nazionale gaining Vatican favor it posed a threat to Fascism. The problem was both institutions were totaltaritarian with one attempting to dominate over the other in this case it was youth. The Vatican refused on the grounds that the Holy See could never accept a revision of ecclesiastical law even if it was in the law of guarantees; it was being imposed by the unilateral act of the Italian Parliament. Mussolini realized that a good rapport with the Catholic Church was essential the Church represented a powerful institution that governed the spiritual needs of the population while fascists governed the political realm. However, misinformation about a proposed agreement to fund missionary activity lead to a rejection by the Catholic Church to endorse the regimes proposal of using Catholic missions to aid in its colonial administration in nationalistic ideals and removed itself from the territorial struggle between France and Italy. This was not the desired result Mussolini had intended and as a result he declared war on the Catholic party by expelling its ministers from his Cabinet. It was the regime's hope that with the development of missionaries could use them to oppose the French influence.
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