It’s clear Mussolini did not remain atheist because of records indicating threat of excommunication following the Lateran Pact and the concordat that followed.
One cannot be excommunicated from a church to which one is not acknowledged to belong.
When was Mussolini threatened with excommunication?
One cannot be excommunicated from a church to which one is not acknowledged to belong.
Mussolini was presumably baptized as an infant and to my knowledge never formally renounced Catholicism. That in no way precludes his being an atheist, pagan or jedi.