Last week a teacher in Palermo, Italy was suspended from her job because some of her students made a video comparing Interior Minister Matteo Salvini’s anti-migrant measures with Benito Mussolini’s antisemitic “race laws.” Educator Rosa Maria Dell’Aria had not suggested any such comparison to her class of fourteen-year-olds, but after intelligence police paid a visit to her classroom she was punished for the students’ “defamation” of Salvini.

The episode illustrated how ugly Italian public debate has gotten under the sway of Salvini. Yet the Lega leader, who is also deputy prime minister, has sought to portray himself as an innocent martyr, under attack from leftist multiculturalists. At a rally in Milan last Saturday he identified his bid to “save Europe” with not just Pope John Paul II but even a litany of saints.

Such a resort to the rosary beads is uncommon in today’s Italy. It would have been odd even in the latter decades of the long-dominant Christian Democrats, and in Salvini’s case is seemingly unconnected to real religious devotion. Yet at the Milan rally it was also tied to a wider reactionary agenda, as the Lega leader presented a series of far-right leaders from around Europe to his own flock of faithful believers.