![]() If politics is about holding one's nose while interests are served, the stench here is overpowering. Long before the war with Britain and France started in 1939 (when Pius XI died), democracy in Italy was lost, along with many lives, with far more to come. In exchange for fiery anticommunism and crucial backing of Vatican policy goals, Italian Fascism got a pass from a silent church on its political monopoly. Mussolini's roots were in strident anticlericalism, yet church support in Catholic Italy was crucial for tightening his grip. Each man mistrusted the other, but the reclusive pope feared the march of communism, Protestantism and anything modern. Kertzer, a Brown professor, in his captivating study of the uneasy bond between Pope Pius XI and Il Duce. ![]() This was anything but the case, writes David I. Kertzer (Penguin 549 pages $32)Īs Benito Mussolini consolidated power in the 1930s, forging alliances with Hitler's Germany and invading Ethiopia in a vainglorious bid for a new Roman Empire, the only consolation for Italians might have been that God was on their side. ![]()
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