One of the best books I read last year was The Pope and Mussolini. Published in 2014 (a lifetime ago, it feels like), it details the frought and complicated relationship between Pope Pius XI and Benito Mussolini, who each came to power in 1922.

This had a personal side for me: My great-grandparents emigrated from Italy to the United States in 1920, and I wanted to understand more of the country they left behind. David Kertzer paints a picture of a nearly failed state, unable to stem violence between fascists and socialsts, with almost no one willing to stand up for democracy.

As much as the book details the personal and political dealings between the two men at the center of the story, what struck me throughout the book was the way institutions and otherwise-powerful actors chose to allow fascism to take hold. When fascists marched on Rome, the king refused to let the government send the military to turn back the Blackshirts. When Mussolini – who had such a reputation for violence against the church that he had the nickname mangiaprete, or priest-eater – promised to become a defender of the Catholic faith, the pope backed him.

The fascist squads had been beating up clerics and terrorising Catholic youth clubs. But Mussolini saw that he could use the church to legitimise his power, so he set about wooing the clergy. He had his wife and children baptised. He gave money for the restoration of churches. After two generations of secularism, there were once again to be crucifixes in Italy’s courts and classrooms. Warily, slowly, the Pope became persuaded that with Mussolini’s help Italy might become, once more, a “confessional state”.

It’s not an uplifting story. People throughout Italy’s political system, as well as the Vatican, found ways to decide that fascism was something they could live with, that there was room for common cause, that the regime’s abuses would fall on someone else. And maybe that was true in some quarters, for a little while, until it wasn’t.