The Mussolinization of St. Francis of Assisi

In 1925, Benito Mussolini proclaimed that Italy had given the world the "most holy of saints to Christendom and humanity:" St. Francis of Assisi. As part of the seventh centenary anniversary of the saint’s death the following year, Mussolini proclaimed Francis’s feast day a national holiday.  This paper examines how these events in 1925-1926 impacted Francis’s legacy in the context of Italian culture, fascist ideology and shifting Church–State relations. The paper also traces this history through several works linking contemporary issues with the saint, which attested to the attempted rapprochement in the lead up to the 1929 Lateran Pacts. Propaganda efforts exemplified the radical reinterpretation of St. Francis’s political legacy considering Mussolini’s cult of personality and autocracy, itself a form of political religion. The connections between Mussolini and St. Francis in 1925-26 also anticipated a broader cultural, post-war afterlife of the fascist co-option of religious ideas.