Posted here for historical reference (and hopefully) a fruitful discussion of the contents of the article, rather than useless derailments. I present this article in English a hundred years after its original publication, thanks to DeepL Translator: 

Vatican

(Published in "Il Popolo d'Italia", January 24, 1922)

by Benito Mussolini

The death of a pope is an event that interests us and moves us as men and as Italians.

The pope is, in reality, an emperor, albeit an elective one. He descends in direct line from the empire of Rome. His political and spiritual dominion extends to four hundred million people, scattered in every corner of the earth, so that we can say that the Catholic empire, which has its capital in Rome, is the largest and oldest empire in the world. It has now lasted for twenty centuries.

At this hour, men of all races and all continents are looking towards Rome. The fact has its own character of grandeur that cannot be diminished by the pronouncements or the silences of the secular world, which has not created and cannot create anything that would rise, even in part, to the enormous spiritual power of Catholicism.

Benedict XV does not present us in his pontificate with the aristocratic and humanistic line of Leo XIII, a Renaissance pope; nor with the humbly Christian line of Pius X, a pope of the heroic eve of the faith. Benedict XV was a political pope. He found himself directing the Catholic flock in the hour of bƖσσdshɛd. We cannot forget in this regard the phrase of the "useless slaughter".

From an abstract point of view, such a horrible condemnation of war may be justified; but, interpreted by the primitive souls of men exposed to all dangers, it could lead to the defeat and servitude of the Fatherland.

We exclude that the pope obeyed these intentions; we say that the sentence could have - and had, fortunately only in part - fatal consequences.

We do not know if and what work Vatican diplomacy did to hasten peace. Papal diplomacy works in secrecy and silence. Let us limit ourselves to noting that all the pope's efforts to hasten peace have been in vain.

The Church has not been annihilated by the stormy events of recent years, but it has not been able to dominate them either. To believe that an evangelical pope, who descended among the belligerents raising his cross, would have succeeded in placating the wrath and disarming the men, is to graze on choreographic romanticism. If the clamorous gesture was not attempted, if the pope kept discreetly and coldly above the fray, it is because any other attitude would have been useless, with serious damage to papal prestige, or would have been extremely dangerous for the existence of the Church.

The great word that was not said during the war was not said during the peace negotiations either. The new political and territorial order of Europe and the world was completed without papal intervention.

However, despite the fall of the largest Catholic empire (that of the Hapsburgs), it can be said that in recent times the international situation of the papacy has rather improved. It is enough to remember that republican Germany has a diplomatic representation at the Holy See and that France, led by the radical-mason Briand, has resumed its relations with the Vatican. As for relations with Italy, it can be said that they have not worsened, but neither have they improved. In the new Italian generations a different evaluation of all the spiritual elements of life is emerging, therefore also of Catholicism, which is the Latin religion par excellence, therefore also of the papacy, which is the heart and brain of this religion. But one should not be under any illusions. We have been arguing for some time in these columns and elsewhere that a détente in relations between Church and State in Italy is desirable and possible, but it must be realized that the Catholic Church cannot go beyond a certain limit. One cannot pretend to make of it a national Church at the service of the nation. The strength, the prestige, the millennial and lasting appeal of Catholicism lie precisely in the fact that Catholicism is not the religion of a given nation or a given race, but it is the religion of all peoples and all races. The strength of Catholicism - the word itself says it - is in its universalism. That is why Rome is the only city on earth that can call itself "universal".

Moreover, what trends did Benedict XV obey? Did he remain in the era of "temporalism"? Or did he accept the now indestructible fact of Italian unity, except to reexamine the relationship between State and Church? The manifestations of the Holy See do not allow us to answer these questions exhaustively.

Thus, for example, we regret not knowing exactly what the pope thought of the popular political movement, which was quite dangerous for Catholicism.

The death of the pope and the emotion aroused by this event throughout the civilized world allow us to see that the religious elements of life are powerfully resurgent in the human soul. The scientistic secularism and its logical degeneration, represented by the charlatan anticlericalism, are agonizing. Men still and always have the pang and hope of the beyond; still and always the deep anonymous masses are tormented by the desire to escape from the short earth and its many miseries to take refuge in the absolute of faith.

I found this to be interesting. "Two years before Benedict's unexpected death from pneumonia in 1922 at the age of 67, the Muslim Turks had erected a statue of him in Istanbul to commemorate "the great pope of the world tragedy ... the benefactor of all people, irrespective of nationality or religion."

That is taken from this article.  https://www.ncronline.org/news/justice/world-war-pope-benedict-xv-and-pursuit-peace

He tried.

Fascinating…never would have expected the Turks to do something like that.