Luigi Sturzo’s resignation on July 10, 1924, was a turning point in the contest over the Acerbo Law: after Mussolini and the Holy See helped force the Italian Popular Party’s founder from political life, the fate of opposition to the electoral reform rested on the party’s deputies. His departure weakened the party’s independence at the moment when its votes could determine whether the government’s proposal advanced.

Pressure on Sturzo

The account places the resignation within a campaign to remove Sturzo from public life. Mussolini had demanded the end of his political career, while Catholic institutions and associations faced continuing threats of reprisals, including threats directed at churches. Monsignor Pucci, speaking for the Holy See, publicly urged Sturzo not to create problems. The Holy See then granted Mussolini’s demand, and Sturzo was forced to resign.

The episode connected political pressure on a party leader to the vulnerability of the institutions around his party. Sturzo was not simply leaving an office: his removal came amid threats against the Catholic organizations that gave the Italian Popular Party its broader political setting. The account presents the Holy See’s intervention as part of the pressure that made his departure possible.

The parliamentary consequence

With its founder gone, the party’s survival and parliamentary role passed to its deputies. The immediate test was the Acerbo Law, which would award two-thirds of the seats to the list receiving a relative majority. Giolitti’s liberal followers had already decided to accept the proposal, hoping that electoral accommodation might tame fascism; some socialist reformists, too, were prepared to cooperate, invoking the protection of workers.

The Popular Party deputies therefore faced a sharply narrowed choice. Without their votes, the opposition could not mount an effective barrier to the bill. The account describes voting against it as the remaining available battle, with each vote potentially determining whether the reform passed. Sturzo’s resignation thus had an immediate institutional consequence: the decision over resistance fell to a parliamentary group deprived of its founder and exposed to pressure from both the government and the Church authorities.

De Gasperi and the divided vote

After Sturzo’s resignation, Alcide De Gasperi served as secretary of the Italian Popular Party. When the Chamber reopened its debate, he proposed dividing the government’s motion into two separate votes: one on confidence in the government and another on the principles of electoral reform. This distinction allowed the Catholic deputies to affirm confidence in Mussolini while refusing to endorse his electoral law.

The party was not presenting a simple choice between supporting and opposing the government. Its deputies sought to preserve room to contest the reform, including by raising the threshold for a list to be declared the majority to 40 percent. Their position showed how Sturzo’s removal changed the form of the conflict: the founder’s exclusion did not end the parliamentary struggle, but left his successors to conduct it through a carefully divided vote.

Significance

The resignation joined coercive political pressure to a decisive parliamentary calculation. Mussolini’s demand, the threats facing Catholic institutions, and the Holy See’s yielding of Sturzo’s political position narrowed the space for independent party leadership. The ensuing debate made the consequences visible: the Popular Party’s deputies had to decide whether to preserve their opposition to the Acerbo Law even while separating that opposition from a vote of confidence in Mussolini’s government.