While most European leaders look weak, Giorgia Meloni, prime minister of Italy, looks strong. Germany’s Bild called her “the secret boss of Europe.” It also identified the key to her success: good relations with the Catholic Church.

“Not so long ago, it was hardly worth remembering the name of the Italian prime minister, as governments changed so quickly in Rome,” Bild remarked on April 29. “Those days are over—since Giorgia Meloni became the first woman ever to take the helm in October 2022.”

Meloni has not only survived the ever changing mood of Italians, political disputes and challenging external crises. She has also proved to be a leader who can speak for all of Europe.

She was the only European Union leader to attend President Donald Trump’s inauguration. She traveled to Washington during the tariff dispute, effectively smoothing trade relations with the United States. She also convinced Trump to visit Europe, more specifically Italy, in his first 100 days.

Europe relies on Meloni. This is quite a turning point, as Bild noted:

When she won the parliamentary elections with her party, Fratelli d’Italia (Brothers of Italy), and took over the government together with the right-wing Lega party of [Vladimir] Putin’s friend Matteo Salvini and the Forza Italia of the now deceased billionaire and scandalous politician Silvio Berlusconi, there was great horror in political Europe.

Meloni’s unclear relationship with the fascism of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who led his country into the Second World War alongside Hitler’s Nazi Germany, was a particular cause for concern.

Meloni has since distanced herself from earlier statements: She has “never felt any sympathy or closeness to anti-democratic regimes … fascism included.” However, the Fratelli d’Italia party logo still shows the eternal flame of Mussolini’s grave—a popular symbol among right-wing radicals and neo-fascists.

Meloni’s party is an offshoot of the Italian Social Movement, a party founded by Mussolini’s supporters after his party was banned.

Those are some concerning details. Prior to Meloni’s election, Brookings.edu wrote:

[S]he will also be its first head of government whose political party has never fully renounced its fascist background. During her campaign, Meloni alternated between reassuring and extremely controversial statements about her political agenda. She also ambiguously defined former Italian Prime Minister Benito Mussolini as a personality who needs to be framed in a specific historical context. The election comes almost exactly 100 years after Mussolini’s march on Rome that opened the way to his dictatorship.

But as Bild noted, “Italy’s voters were clearly not very interested in this; they were longing for a new beginning.”

How did she win not just Italy’s favor but that of Europe and large parts of the world? Bild explained:

Meloni appeals to traditional, Catholic Italy and its conservative image of the family. Unlike the [Alternative für Deutschland] in Germany or the nationalists around Marine Le Pen in France, Meloni combined right-wing ideology with Christian values: “I am Giorgia, I am a woman, I am a mother, I am Italian, I am Christian,” she shouted on the campaign stage.

As head of government, she sought proximity to the church and the Vatican and was the first official visitor to the bedside of the recently deceased pope. “Italy and I will always be grateful to him,” she said after Francis’s death. She had “the privilege of a personal, sincere relationship with the pope” and had been able to “talk to him about everything.”

Meloni … is far less conservative in her private life than in politics. In October 2023, she separated from her partner Andrea Giambruno after 10 years of dating. Video recordings had previously emerged in which the tv presenter asked a colleague for a “threesome.” …

In the meantime, however, they seem to be getting on well again, with the “First Family” making headlines when they spent a summer vacation together in a luxury vacation home in Puglia in southern Italy (approximately €8,000 per night).

It is increasingly rare to find people in Europe who uphold traditional Christian principles. Virtually no one regards marriage as a sacred union worth preserving. In today’s climate, a leader only needs to dismiss the latest woke trends to be labeled a conservative.

Millions of people are trusting these emerging “conservative” leaders who give a sense of stability. In doing so, they are creating space for historic evil to resurface.

“The Brothers of Italy … talk a lot about Europe’s Christian heritage and the importance of family,” wrote Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry. “These points sound good—but we must put them in this historical context. Mussolini’s alliance with the Catholic Church bore terrible fruits! The Bible specifically warns us to expect a return of the same empire that Hitler and Mussolini led, with the same relationship with the Catholic Church.”

In 1929, Mussolini established a concordat with the Vatican, calling for the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire. Adolf Hitler also signed a concordat with the Vatican. Herbert W. Armstrong, editor in chief of the Plain Truth, predecessor of the Trumpet, was on the scene at the time and wrote in 1938:

It happens that Mussolini is a Roman Catholic officially for political reasons, but privately he is an infidel and hates the Catholic religion. Hitler hates it even more, and has been trying to stamp it out by setting up his own personal state religion in Germany. But Mussolini is well aware of the pope’s influence, and therefore his value to him. So he will strike a sharp bargain with the pope. The pope will agree to exert his influence to bring about the revival of the so-called holy roman empire. Mussolini will in turn agree to make the pope supreme religious head of it all. Next Mussolini will drive another sharp bargain with Hitler, showing the strategic need of the pope’s powerful influence and how this influence can be used as a tool to bring still greater power to these two demon-possessed dictators. The deal with Hitler will be that the pope shall be given supreme religious power in Germany and all countries until he has served their purpose—at which time these unprincipled rulers will turn on him and do away with the Catholic religion altogether!

Recent revelations have shown that Hitler did end up having regular secret talks with Pope Pius xii. With the help of the pope, Hitler and Mussolini built an empire. However, this empire was destroyed before it achieved all its goals.

After the war ended, Mr. Armstrong came to understand that this empire represented the sixth head of the seven-headed beast of Revelation 17. This prophecy shows that the union of church and state, represented symbolically by a woman riding a beast, will rise yet again.

To the world, the Holy Roman Empire seems dead and buried. Yet it is prophesied to revive once more. Revelation 17:8 records: “The beast that thou sawest was, and is not; and shall ascend out of the bottomless pit, and go into perdition: and they that dwell on the earth shall wonder, whose names were not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world, when they behold the beast that was, and is not, and yet is.”

The Bible reveals who will rule this empire: “And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, which have received no kingdom as yet; but receive power as kings one hour with the beast” (verse 12).

This prophecy was not fulfilled in World War ii. The consecutive verses, which speak of a break between church and state (verse 16), will be fulfilled just prior to the prophesied return of Jesus Christ, who will put an end to this deceived system (verse 14).

For decades after World War ii, Mr. Armstrong prophesied that European leaders would once again use an alliance with the Catholic Church to rise to power. Our free booklet He Was Right highlights his Bible-based forecast.