The term clerical fascism (clerico-fascismo) seems to have emerged in the early 1920s in Italy to refer specifically to the faction of the Catholic party PPI-Partito Popolare Italiano (precursor of Christian Democracy in Italy), which chose to support Benito Mussolini and his régime. It was allegedly coined by Don Luigi Sturzo, an Italian priest and Christian Democrat leader who took the opposite option and was forced into exile in 1924.[2] Historian Walter Laqueur found the term 'clerical fascism' mentioned earlier, even before Mussolini's March on Rome (October 1922), referring to "a group of Catholic believers in Northern Italy who advocated a synthesis of Catholicism and fascism"