Italians will vote in national elections this coming Sunday after Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s unity government was brought down by party infighting in July. That has ushered in a summer of fierce campaigning and feisty debates, both on television and along sidewalk cafes, during a time when most Italians are relaxing at the beach.

If polls are correct, then history could be made once the votes are counted. Giorgia Meloni, who heads the Brothers of Italy party, could very well become the country’s first female prime minister since the nation became a republic in 1946.

Running on a “God, homeland and family” platform, the 45-year-old neo-conservative has her supporters giddy and her foes warning Italy could again turn to fascism.

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Brothers of Italy — named after the opening words of the country’s national anthem — has roots in the post-war fascist movement that has hailed the legacy of dictator Benito Mussolini. The right-wing party took 4% of the vote in the last election, held in 2018, but according to some pollsters could win nearly 25% this time.

Italy is a country where the political paradigm has for decades included right-wing parties with fascist sympathies and left-wing parties with communist ones and sympathy for the old Soviet Union. For much of the post-war era, the Christian Democrats dominated Italy’s politics, with its mix of Catholic-inspired social programs and centrist policies. The Italian Communist Party served as the major opposition force during those years.

In 1994, a political firestorm erupted when a widespread scandal that involved kickbacks obliterated many political parties, including the Christian Democrats. Silvio Berlusconi, a media mogul and then-owner of the AC Milan soccer club, created Forza Italy, a center-right party. His coalition won the election. Italian politics was forever changed with right-wing parties, once pushed to the margins, able to win regional and national elections.

Forza Italy is again running to win a majority of Parliament, joining forces with Brothers of Italy and Matteo Salvini’s Northern League party. All three parties have a populist streak, combining right-wing politics with a mix of traditional Christian values.

In Italy, Christians, who represent 84% of the population, are overwhelmingly Catholic. Most are all over the political spectrum in a country where prime ministers come and go and parliamentary coalitions collapse with a torrid frequency. Governments average about a year in length.

“Catholics have not declared a retreat from Italian politics: They still vote and they are still elected, but not in an identifiable Catholic or Christian party,” Massimo Faggioli, professor of theology and religious studies at Villanova University, noted on the eve of the 2018 national elections. “Among the many political parties running for Parliament seats, not one of them sees itself or markets itself as the political home for Catholics.”

Meloni’s upbringing and political rise

Catholics may be politically homeless, but that doesn’t mean they won’t vote. Meloni, for example, was born and raised in Rome in a working-class family. She grew up without her father, a tax advisor who left the family when she was 11. She became a big fan of fantasy novels and the English writer J.R.R. Tolkien.

Four years later, Meloni, a shy teen, found purpose in the Youth Front, a group tied to the post-war neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, a minor political party at the time that saw growth in the Berlusconi years.

With populism sweeping much of the planet over the past decade, Meloni, who is Catholic, founded the Brothers of Italy in 2012. Its platform was conservative on many political and social issues. The party grew increasingly anti-immigrant. It also adopted many platforms found in the Republican Party in the United States, such as being anti-abortion and staunchly supportive of religious liberty in a country growing increasingly secular.

In an April 2021 message posted on the party’s official YouTube channel just days before Easter, Meloni, a member of Parliament since 2006, said that “Christians are being persecuted for the simple fact of their faith” in places such as Syria and Iraq.

“Defending Christians, wherever they may be, also means defending our identity,” she added. “It means reaffirming our connection to the sanctity of life, equality between men and women, the defense of the natural family founded on marriage.”  

Meloni’s 2021 autobiography “Io sono Giorgia” (which translates into English as “I am Giorgia”) gives readers an insight into her life. The book’s title is a nods to a viral YouTube video that remixes one of Meloni’s speeches from October 2019 where she says, “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am Italian, I am Christian. You can't take this away from me!.”

The video has racked up over 12 million views.

In the book, she writes, “In short, political correctness — the Gospel that a stateless and rootless elite wants to impose — is the greatest threat to the founding value of identities.”

Critics, meanwhile, have labeled her a “far-right” candidate for her past statements praising Mussolini and for what they deem xenophobic rhetoric, a label Meloni has often rejected as a smear campaign.

“Meloni is adept at both courting and distancing herself from such extremists whenever it suits her,” Jamie Mackay, a writer and translator based in Florence, wrote in a recent column in The Guardian.

Abortion, immigration and LGBTQ rights  

Italian politics is very different from that in the United States. For starters, issues that have their roots in religion and faith, such as abortion, have not traditionally been major campaign issues.

Abortion in Italy became legal in May 1978, when women were allowed to terminate a pregnancy during the first 90 days. A proposal to repeal the law was considered in a 1981 referendum but was rejected by 68% of voters. While Pope Francis has been a staunch anti-abortion advocate, that has done little to nothing for Italy.

While Meloni has called abortion a “defeat,” she has also said that abolishing the 1978 law is not on her agenda. Nonetheless, the high number of gynecologists who refuse to terminate pregnancies for moral reasons has meant that Italian women encounter hurdles when trying to access safe abortions. Under the 1978 law, doctors who work for the country’s public health care system can declare themselves “conscientious objectors” to avoid performing abortions.

Since Italy does have a declining birthrate, many politicians — on the left or right — aren’t keen on expanding abortion rights. If anything, right-wing parties are looking to create financial incentives for families who have multiple children, much like Vikto Orban did in Hungary. Meloni sees herself as an ally of Orban and his policies.  

Meloni, who also speaks English and Spanish, has changed political perceptions in recent years. In 2018, at her party’s annual conference, Meloni hosted the now-embattled Stephen Bannon, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump.

Another issue with ties to the Catholic Church is immigration and how to handle the influx of migrants. Since Italy is a peninsula and most of its border is water, the debate on how to stop illegal immigration has been difficult at best and emotionally charged at worst. It’s also a matter of life or death for those who attempt the sea voyage, which often results in drownings.

The Catholic Church, especially under Pope Francis, has shown much compassion for immigrants, particularly undocumented ones, and has come into direct conflict with Italy’s right-wing parties.

Italy is also a country where same-sex couples are not allowed to adopt children, a measure Meloni and her coalition support. Earlier this summer, during a visit to Spain, she delivered a speech that celebrated “the natural family” while attacking “the LGBT lobby.”

Country of Catholic contradictions

Pope Francis has been openly anti-populist, but the Italian people seem open to it now that the situation has gotten more dire economically as a result of COVID-19, rising inflation and an energy crisis triggered by Russia’s attack on Ukraine. The pope has been good about staying away from the morass of Italian politics, leaving it to the Italian bishops to exert influence.

As Vatican observer John Allen Jr. wrote in a recent Crux column: “Italian Catholics also have a commendable capacity to live with contradiction, reflecting a healthy sense of the complexities of things. Small case in point: I recently went to a local pharmacy for a Covid test, and I noticed a poor box to support the hospital founded by Padre Pio atop a shelf. Upon further inspection, it was the same shelf that offered the pharmacy’s collection of jumbo-sized boxes of condoms.”

Meloni is an embodiment of such contradictions. For example, she supports family values and other Catholic doctrines, but has a daughter, named Ginevra, with her boyfriend Andrea Giambruno, a journalist.

Allen said Italy is a place where “the sacred and the secular have been forced by bitter experience to work out a modus vivendi, for the most part respecting the legitimacy and autonomy of the other.”

Despite all these contradictions, Meloni is poised to be prime minister. Her campaign slogan may be “Ready” — but it remains to be seen if she, the majority of her countrymen and the world are ready to see her lead Italy.

Clemente Lisi is a senior editor at Religion Unplugged and teaches journalism at The King’s College in New York City. His new book “The FIFA World Cup: A History of the Planet's Biggest Sporting Event” comes out Oct. 12. Follow him on Twitter @ClementeLisi.