I do not wish to rain on anyone's parade. But. There are a few issues with the article's summary that might help provide a better context for your inquiry.

As noted, Italy introduced a rather strict antisemitic legislation in 1938, limiting the opportunities for employment, education, marriages, residence of the Italian Jews, in such a way as to de facto remove the "Jewish presence" from the Italian life. These laws were already extremely afflictive at the time of their introduction and were - despite the widespread narrative of overwhelming opposition by the Italian population and (even) authorities - actually enforced by the Regime quite seriously (as noted already by De Felice in his Storia degli Ebrei Italiani sotto il fascismo, 1961 - the first systematic attempt at a general history on the topic). It is important, in order to assess the degree of commitment of a Regime to a certain policy and its reception, to compare it to how effectively and strictly other policies were enforced (in this sense, the antisemitic legislation worked comparatively better than many other pieces of demographic or social legislation). This doesn't certainly mean that there weren't Italians (both Jews and non Jews) who resisted it, or - more frequently - sought ways to circumvent it and shield their friends and relatives, or even complete strangers, from suffering the worst consequences of it.

Different reconstructions of the genesis of the antisemitic legislation exist (from G. Favre and M. Sarfatti, who lean towards an intentionalist interpretation of Mussolini's antisemitic choice; to those who, albeit with varying weight, ascribe a role to both the connection with traditional approaches to the "Jewish question" in the Catholic world and Italian culture, and the "segregationist" legislation passed in 1935-36 to address the relations with the subjects of Italy's new African "Empire", and to the influence of the German model - like M. Michaelis, G. Israel, G. Miccoli). I regard the connection between the racist legislation introduced within the colonies and the subsequent antisemitic laws to be a persuasive one, even if there is no doubt that the progressive aligment with Germany influenced the forms and modes of extension of certain regulations to the mainland (for a recent examination of this point, see Matard-Bonucci).

That said, it is necessary to keep in mind that ideological influences - which nonetheless seemed to attract for the most part those "newer generations" who sought more radical and genuine modes of fascist existence in the National-Socialist model - and matters of convenience do no represent a constriction. Italy didn't have to pass antisemitic legislation in 1938. The alliance with Germany made it more sensible from the perspective of the Regime, and the necessity to find an answer to what was perceived as a failure - or at least a lagging behind - in the project to "remake the Italians", encouraged the recourse to more "radical" social policies. But - unlike many Jews in the years to follow - the Italian Fascist Regime didn't exist, in 1938, on the verge of physical elimination. There were other options - more costly, and inconvenient ones perhaps - but options the Regime deemed not worthy of being pursued.

At that time - and until Italy's national sovreignty, and credibility with the Axis ally was completely shattered in 1943 - it would be improper to claim that Mussolini was "protecting the jews from Hitler". The Italian antisemitic laws afflicted Italian citizens (sort of, according to the Italian legislation of the time), and delivering them to a foreign power would have represented a serious blow for a Regime which should have been able to handle the "Jewish question" by its own means. Additionally, the estimated number of Italian Jews rounded up to about 50,000 in 1938; a fairly modest number compared to the much more sizable communities still harbored in Hungary or, previously, in Poland and in the Baltic States, so that (even from the perspective of the Nazi Government) the opportunity of their elimination probably didn't warrant the risk of worsening their relations with Italy. Furthermore, it is true that - until 1943 - the perspective of physical elimination of the Italian Jews had remained confined to the minds of few, selected, rabidly antisemitic figures within the Fascist ranks. Mussolini himself - who knew about the German conduct in the occupied territories and was (broadly) aware of their policies of extermination - doesn't appear to have conceived of such fate for the Italian Jews, nor to harbor any fundamental hatred towards them, aside from the adoption of certain rather common tropes of literary antisemitism.

It's only in September 1943, when Mussolini is rescued from his imprisonment and installed as head of the puppet Repubblica Sociale Italiana, that the issue of the Italian Jews - and their deportation and extermination - returns prominently on the table. And it is at that moment that the Germans - who certainly had a habit of finding faults in the Italian conduct of the war, and in connecting every fault to the obscure influence of the Jews - could begin to exert a significant degree of pressure on the Italian authorities to deliver the Italian Jews for extermination. This emboldened the Italian supporters of a radical solution to the "Jewish question". Giovanni Preziosi - former publicist and personality of some significance within the Regime - actually took matters into his own hands. Dissatisfied with the "program of Verona" which only branded Jews "foreigners" belonging to "an enemy nation" and for the expansion of antisemitic laws allowing for the seizure of their properties and deportation into selected areas, and with Mussolini's apparent attempts to stall or delay the execution of (what, at the time, had actually become) the German demands, wrote directly to Mussolini complaining about the inadequacy of the measures adopted to that point, blaming the Italian betrayal on the Jewish influence, and advocating for the removal of every Jew, "jewish woman or mongrel" from Italy as the only mean to achieve the unity necessary to win the war. Preziosi had made it so that the letter reached Mussolini through a channel that the Germans had easy access to, de facto ensuring that the same letter would make its way up to the German commands.

It was then Preziosi himself who - in March 1944 - was placed at the head of the Italian "Ispectorate for Demography and Race", tasked with ensuring that the Italian Jewish residents were properly located and accounted for. Preziosi's initiatives were, indeed, hampered by the reluctance of the Italian authorities to comply with his fanatic zeal and by the progressive collapse of the political and social structures within the German occupied portion of Northern Italy - the RSI government itself rejected Preziosi's proposal for a full revision of the "lists of Jewishness" compiled in 1938.

As a last note, given that the article makes a point of quoting a Holocaust survivor offering her testimony, and that I see the topic appear quite often; one should be careful to put some nuance in addressing the matter of Jewish children being taught Christian rituals in order to blend in.

Signore, signora, tomorrow is the Feast of St. Anthony, and on this feast you tie your kerchief this way, and give a donation there, hold your rosary like this … It was very, very important to blend in.

By all means, the person interviewed is the best judge of her own experience, and full credit to the people who sheltered and protected her.

But the author of the piece should be aware of the significant role played by the idea of "redemption" of the Jews among those catholic groups which - without supporting any policy of extermination - saw the introduction of (traditional) forms of antisemitic discrimination as an opportunity to test the new centrality of Catholicism within the Italian state. The idea of cultural elements and forms of devotion being strong enough to overcome any supposed "biological" fault of the "Jewish blood" is also regarded as a trait-d'union between the Fascist approach to mixed-blood situations and the Church's approach to mixed-marriages situations. No doubt there were many clergymen and women who placed the protection of human lives ahead of personal and religious concerns, and many devout Catholics who did the same - nor did this interpretation mirror the official position of the Church - but it's a matter that should be handled with more care, especially when the article appears already to paint too rosy a picture of the condition of the Jews in Italy during 1938-45.