An emerging rift between the Vatican and Silvio Berlusconi, the embattled Italian Prime Minister, has widened further after top church figures rallied to defend Dino Boffo, the Catholic editor whose private life was the subject of renewed attack by one of the premier’s newspapers yesterday.
Il Giornale, the Berlusconi family-owned newspaper, yesterday continued with a campaign to expose Mr Boffo as a homosexual with a police record, despite growing evidence that the stories are souring an increasingly fraught relationship between the Italian leader and the Catholic church.
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State and deputy to Pope Benedict XVI, telephoned Mr Boffo, editor of Avvenire, the newspaper of the Conference of Italian Bishops, the CEI, to offer his “solidarity”.
Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, head of the CEI, described the attack on Mr Boffo as “disgusting”. He later added that Pope Benedict XVI had phoned him yesterday to discuss “the present situation” and had offered the head of the Italian bishops his “thanks and appreciation”.
He was joined by Cardinal Dionigi Tettamanzi, the Archbishop of Milan, who said he had offered Mr Boffo his “esteem and gratitude”.
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Cardinal Stanislao Dziwisz, former secretary to the late Pope John Paul II and now Archbishop of Krakow in Poland, said it was “the first time a Catholic paper has been attacked with such violence”. He added that he was “very worried by the moral decadence into which Italy is sliding because of the behaviour of certain important political leaders”.
Last Friday, after the first of the stories about Mr Boffo, Cardinal Bertone cancelled a dinner with Mr Berlusconi which was to have followed a traditional mass at L’Aquila in Abruzzo for the forgiveness of sins. A meeting between the Pope and the Prime Minister that had been due this Friday will no longer take place. The support of the Vatican is a key political consideration in the devoutly Catholic country.
Mr Boffo has been targeted in a counter-offensive against critics of Mr Berlusconi’s scandal-plagued private life over the past four months. Veronica Lario, the Prime Minister’s wife, is seeking a divorce citing his unhealthy obsession with young women, and he has faced accusations that he slept with an escort girl.
As part of the Berlusconi fightback, the left-leaning paper La Repubblica confirmed that it had received a writ from Mr Berlusconi’s lawyers claiming a €1 million in damages for “defamation” after it published ten questions to Mr Berlusconi about alleged scandals involving prostitutes and aspiring showgirls, asking him to assure Italy and its allies that he was not vulnerable to blackmail. A decision to sue newspapers over their reports of the allegations has sparked widespread criticism that press freedom is being unfairly stifled.
Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, the former President, said the writ would only draw attention to Mr Berlusconi’s failure to answer the questions, and was an “incredible own goal”.
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The attack on Mr Boffo at the end of last week by Vittorio Feltri, the combative editor of Il Giornale, claimed Mr Boffo was a homosexual who had not only been convicted in 2004 of telephone harassment of the wife of his gay lover — paying a small fine after reaching a plea bargain — but also been listed by police in a document as a gay “noted for this kind of activity”.
Mr Boffo explained yesterday that a former drug addict to whom he had given shelter had used his mobile phone to make the harassing calls.
The stories directly dragged in the government yesterday with Roberto Maroni, the Interior Minister, forced to telephone Mr Boffo to assure him that no such police document existed.
Officials said the alleged police document appeared in reality to be to an “anonymous letter” sent to Italian bishops earlier this year.
Mr Feltri justified the stories by arguing that Mr Boffo had no right to pose as a “moralist” and to criticise the Prime Minister’s “indecent” lifestyle.
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Although Mr Berlusconi was forced to disassociate himself from his own newspaper, claiming he had had no communication with Mr Feltri over the attack, his unrepentant editor pledged to carry on.
“Why give up when we have only just loaded our rifles?” Mr Feltri, asked if he would now moderate his tone, replied.