 The Catholic Church was in favor of Umberto, who unlike his father, was a sincere Catholic who it was believed would keep the Communists out of power.However, De Gasperi admitted that though the monarchy was a conservative institution, "it was difficult to answer the argument that the monarchy had done little to serve the interests of the country or people during the past thirty years".Umberto's own relations with the Allies were strained by his insistence that after the war Italy should keep all of its colonial empire, including Ethiopia and the parts of Yugoslavia that Mussolini had annexed in 1941.