Clerical Fascism - History

History

The term clerical fascism (clerico-fascismo) seems to have emerged in the early 1920s in Italy to refer specifically to the faction of the Catholic party PPI-Partito Popolare Italiano (precursor of Christian Democracy in Italy), which chose to support Benito Mussolini and his régime. It was allegedly coined by Don Luigi Sturzo, an Italian priest and Christian Democrat leader who took the opposite option and was forced into exile in 1924. Historian Walter Laqueur found the term 'clerical fascism' mentioned earlier, even before Mussolini's March on Rome (October 1922), referring to "a group of Catholic believers in Northern Italy who advocated a synthesis of Catholicism and fascism".

Sturzo himself made a distinction, within Italian Catholics leaning toward fascism, between the "filofascists", who left the Catholic party PPI very early, in 1921 and 1922, and the "clerical fascists", who stayed in the party after the March on Rome until 1923, advocating collaboration with the fascist government. Eventually even the latter group converged gradually with Mussolini, abandoning the PPI in 1923 and creating the Centro Nazionale Italiano, before the PPI was disbanded by the Fascist régime in 1926.

The term has since been widely used by scholars, such as Hugh Trevor-Roper, who sought to refine a typology of fascism, contrasting authoritarian-conservative 'clerical fascism' with more radical variants.