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.

Authoritarian and populist leaders co-opting religious iconography is not a new phenomenon, it remains a common trope in the modern era. Emilio Gentile’s work on Italian fascist culture and political religion further illuminates the ways in which populist leaders like Mussolini constructed God-like or saintly images for themselves (Emilio Gentile, “Politics as Religion,” 2006). For Gentile, Fascism in 1920s Italy was the first of such modern, totalitarian “political religions.” 

Conversely, in modern popular culture, St. Francis of Assisi has had wide ranging influence across Christian and non-Christian cultures alike. Yet during the fascist period from 1922 until the Second World War, Francis’s image symbolized a heroism that combined patriotism with a deep Christian virtue. Positing a role model for all Italian citizens, the regime named St. Francis of Assisi and St. Catherine of Siena patron saints of Italy in 1939. 

Mussolini’s propagandistic self-fashioning has been widely studied, though his connection to St. Francis in this regard may seem tangential. In particular, Fr. Paolo Ardali’s 1926 book “San Francesco e Mussolini” (“Saint Francis and Mussolini”) offers an underexplored side of Francis’s cultural relevance. Ardali’s book transposed several themes of Franciscan virtue onto the Duce: the reconstruction of the Church, the need for a cultural renaissance and the importance of fascist virtue in enabling faith in God and country. According to Ardali, Mussolini and St. Francis’ interior and external strength was reflected in their efforts to usher in a cultural renaissance and rebuild both the society and the Church. These ideas have continued to resonate culturally and politically, from Roberto Rossellini’s Franciscan-inspired neorealist cinema to present-day populism and autocratic religion-inspired propaganda. 

In addition to Mussolini’s 1925 proclamation and Ardali’s book, popular slogans surrounding the anniversary characterized Francis as “the most Italian of saints, the most saintly of Italians.” Other propaganda included small, printed images of St Francis alongside the Duce, examples of the many “santini” (“little saints”) that contained devotional images of Mary and saints combined with fascist propaganda and images of the Duce (Tommaso Caliò and Roberto Rusconi eds., “San Francesco d’Italia: santità e identità nazionale," 2011). These images portrayed St. Francis protecting Mussolini, whereby the latter was deemed “the great protector of the Franciscan faith.” New technology and mass media, including radio broadcasts and films on St. Francis, also played an important role. Artists, clergy, and officials also started preparing for the International Franciscan Exhibition held in 1927 in Assisi. The exhibition reinforced a synthesis of contemporary culture and a medieval notion of Francis, yet modern aesthetics were still approached with caution. Overall, the multimedia approach to the Jubilee and Franciscan anniversary indicated the importance of mass culture not only to the Fascist government but also to the Church and local clergy. These venues would enable Ardali’s ideas to remain influential in post-war culture.

In sum, 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. Lastly, the paper will also discuss how 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.