World War I he was politically neutral, sympathizing with the ultimately unsuccessful efforts of Pope Benedict XV and Karl I of Austria to obtain an honorable peace and stop the war. Ultimately, he sided with Italy. Opposition to Fascism In 1919, he was among of the founders of the Italian People's Party (PPI), with Luigi Sturzo. He served as a deputy in the Italian Parliament from 1921 to 1924, a period marked by the rise of Fascism. He initially supported the participation of the PPI in Benito Mussolini's first government in October 1922. As Mussolini's hold on the Italian government grew stronger, he soon diverged with the Fascists over constitutional changes to the powers of the executive and to the election system (the Acerbo Law), and to Fascist violence against the constitutional parties, culminating in the murder of Giacomo Matteotti. The PPI split, and De Gasperi became secretary of the remaining anti-Fascist group in May 1924. In November 1926, in a climate of overt violence and intimidation by the Fascists, the PPI was dissolved. De Gasperi was arrested in March 1927 and sentenced to four years in prison. The Vatican negotiated his release. A year and a half in prison nearly broke De Gasperi's health. After his release in July 1928, he was unemployed and in serious financial hardship, until in 1929 his ecclesiastical contacts secured him a job as a cataloger in the Vatican Library, where he spent the next fourteen years until the collapse of Fascism in July 1943. During the 1930s, De Gasperi wrote a regular international column for the review L'Illustrazione Vaticana in which he depicted the chief political battle as one between communism and Christianity. In 1934, he rejoiced in the defeat of the Austrian Social Democrats, whom he condemned for "de-Christianizing" the country, and in 1937 he declared that the German Church was correct in preferring Nazism to Bolshevism. Founding Christian Democracy During World War II, he organized the establishment of the first (and at the time, illegal) Christian Democracy (DC) party, drawing upon the ideology of the PPI. In January 1943, he published "Ideas for Reconstruction" (), which amounted to a program for the party. He became the first general secretary of the new party in 1944. De Gasperi was the undisputed head of the Christian Democrats, the party that dominated Parliament for decades. Although his control of the DC appeared almost complete,