Was Mussolini a Catholic

Answer 1

Well, that is an interesting answer. First, allow me to explain that Mussolini's mother was a fanatic Roman Catholic. Thus, in his youth and until his teen years, he was a devout Catholic. However, later in life, he believed that religion prevented him from better leading his country. Ergo, he became atheist.

Answer 2

Mussolini was indeed baptized Catholic. Mussolini was raised by a devoutly Catholic mother and an anti-clerical father. His mother Rosa had him baptized into the Roman Catholic Church, and took her children to services every Sunday. His father never attended.

Mussolini regarded his time at a religious boarding school as punishment, compared the experience to hell, and "once refused to go to morning mass and had to be dragged there by force".

Mussolini would become anti-clerical like his father. As a young man, he "proclaimed himself to be an atheist and several times tried to shock an audience by calling on God to strike him dead."

He denounced socialists who were tolerant of religion, or who had their children baptized. He believed that science had proven there was no God, and that the historical Jesus was ignorant and mad. He considered religion a disease of the psyche, and accused Christianity of promoting resignation and cowardice.

He was never formally excommunicated but he did renounce his faith during his days as a member of a radical communist cell in the First World War and throughout his life although he always kept up good relationship with the Church in his job as leader of Italy, he constantly belittled faith and Catholicism.

Mussolini was an admirer of Friedrich Nietzsche. According to Denis Mack Smith, "In Nietzsche he found justification for his crusade against the Christian virtues of humility, resignation, charity, and goodness. He valued Nietzsche's concept of the superman, "The supreme egoist who defied both God and the masses, who despised egalitarianism and democracy, who believed in the weakest going to the wall and pushing them if they did not go fast enough."

Mussolini made vitriolic attacks against Christianity and the Catholic Church, "which he accompanied with provocative and blasphemous remarks about the consecrated host and about a love affair between Christ and Mary Magdalen.

He believed that socialists who were Christian or who accepted religious marriage should be expelled from the party. He denounced the Catholic Church for "its authoritarianism and refusal to allow freedom of thought..." Mussolini's newspaper, La Lotta di Classe, reportedly had an anti-Christian editorial stance.

Answer 3

He was raised a Roman Catholic later became an Atheist, but then re-converted to Roman Catholicism for political reasons.

Answer 4

He had no religion, he was an Atheist.