The fall of the Bonomi ministry, attributed to inefficiency in domestic politics and to the fall of the Banca Italiana di Sconto, was really due to the failure of a commemoration for Pope Benedict XV from the national parliament.
I had already on various occasions disclosed to the Fascisti, whom I considered and consider always the aristocracy of Italy, that our religious ideal had in itself moral attributes of first importance. I had affirmed the necessity of condemning the unfruitful conception, absurd and artificial, of affected or vicious anti-clericalism. That tendency not only kept us in a situation of moral inferiority as compared with other peoples, but also divided the Italians in the religious field into various schools of thought. Above all it exposed us to such corrupting, sinister and tortuous power as that of international Masonry of a political type, as distinguished from the Masonry known in the Anglo-Saxon countries.
I had wanted to show that the problem of the relations between the State and the Church in Italy was not to be considered insoluble, and to explain how necessary it was to create, after a calm and impartial objective examination, an atmosphere of understanding, in order to give to the Italian people a basis for a life of harmony between religious faith and civil life.
The Fascisti, as intelligent people worthy of the epoch in which they were living, followed me in the new conception of religious policy. To it was attached our war against Masonry as we knew Masonry in Italy. It was a war of fundamental importance and Fascism was almost unanimous in a determination to fight it to the end.
Let us not forget that the Masons of Italy have always represented a distortion, not only in political life, but in spiritual concepts. All the strength of Masonry was directed against the papal policies, but this struggle represented no real and profound ideal. The secret society from a practical point of view rested on an association of mutual adulation, of reciprocal aid, of pernicious nepotism and favoritism. To become powerful and to consummate its underhanded dealings, Masonry made use of the weaknesses of the Liberal governments that succeeded each other in Italy after 1870 to extend its machinations in the bureaucracy, in the magistracy, in the field of education, and also in the army, so that it could dominate the vital ganglions of the whole nation. Its secret character throughout the twentieth century, its mysterious meetings, abhorrent to our beautiful communities with their sunlight and their love of truth, gave to the sect the character of corruption, a crooked concept of life, without programme, without soul, without moral value.
My antipathy for that disgusting form of secret association goes back to my youth. Long before, at the Socialist congress of Ancona in 1914, I had presented to my comrades the dilemma: Socialists or Masons? That point of view had won a complete triumph, in spite of the strong opposition of the Mason-socialists.
Later, in Fascism, I made the same gesture of strength. It took courage. I obeyed the positive command of my conscience, and not any opportunism. My attitude had nothing in common with the anti-Masonic spirit of the Jesuits. They acted for reasons of defense. After all, their inner organization as a religious society is almost completely unknown.
For my direct, methodical and consistent course of policy the hate of the Masonic sect persecutes me even now. Masonry of that type has been beaten in Italy, but it operates and conspires behind mask of the international anti-Fascism. It utterly fails to defeat me. It tries to throw mud at me, but the insult does not reach its mark. It machinates plots and crimes, but the hired assassins do not control my destiny. It goes gossiping about my weaknesses, and the supposed organic afflictions of my body, but I am more alive and stronger than ever.
This is a war without quarter, a war of which I am a veteran. Every time that I have wanted to cauterize difficult situations in Italian political life, every time that I have wanted to give a sincere, frank and loyal moral rectitude to the personnel in politics, I have always had against me our Masonry! But that organization, which in other times was very powerful, has been beaten by me. Against me it did not and cannot win. Italians won this battle for me. They found the cure for this leprosy.
To-day in Italy we breathe the open air; life is exposed to the light of day.