As for the previous municipal election, no clear winner emerged from the competition. The left-wing "Bloc of the People" list gained again the most seats. Differently from the 1946 election, the Common Man's Front did poorly and lost more than half of its votes, while Christian Democracy enforced its position making a net gain of 10 seats with more than 32% of votes. As a result of the election, on 5 November 1947 the City Council re-elected Salvatore Rebecchini (DC) as Mayor. Rebecchini obtained 41 votes out of 80 and his election was made possible thanks to the support of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement. He formed a centre-right municipal executive board composed by DC, UQ and PLI. Sunday 12 October 1947. "Sources: La Stampa , 1946–1955 Local Elections (Italian)"  The election took place on 25 May 1952. National political situation had deeply changed during the previous five years. In 1951 Alcide De Gasperi's government changed the local electoral law to a block voting system, to ensure the leadership of its local administrations: two thirds of the seats would be ensured to the winning coalition, abolishing the proportional representation. The election saw a considerable and unprecedented intervention from the Vatican to secretly influence the electoral outcome. Pope Pius XII was rather distrustful of De Gasperi and Christian Democracy, considering the party indecisive and fractious – reformist currents within it particularly, which tended to the moderate left. On the eve of the municipal election, in which again the Communist and Socialist parties threatened to win out, he used informal connections to make his views known. The pope stated that the war against communism was a holy war and excommunicated members of the Italian Communist Party. Having decided to encourage the Christian democrats to consider a political alliance with the right-wing parties as part of an anti-communist coalition, he asked the Jesuit Father Riccardo Lombardi to speak with De Gasperi and convince him to consider such an alliance – an electoral alliance with those even of monarchist and neo-fascist tendencies –including the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement. Adopting a domino theory he warned that, if "the Communists win in Rome, in Italy, it will cast a shadow on the entire world: France would become Communist, and then Spain and then all of Europe". De Gasperi instead rejected the idea as politically dangerous to the long term fortunes of his party and sustained a centrist electoral alliance. In the election the centrist coalition obtained an absolute majority.