The Lateran Treaty — are you kidding me?! What year is it again? As if the Pope himself even gives a damn about this. Burslosconi should be ashamed:
…after warning everyone that within 20 years Italian teachers would be vetted and chosen by the Vatican, she got to the punchline: “But then, within 20 years the Pope will be where he ought to be — in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils, and very active ones, not passive ones.”
The joke may have gone done well with her crowd on the Piazza Navona in Rome, but not with Italian prosecutors. She is facing prosecution for “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Benedict XVI.
(…)
“You can agree or not agree with what she said — and personally I didn’t — but to put people in prison for what they think is reminiscent of a time when those who thought differently had castor oil poured down their throats” — a reference to the Fascist era, when the Laterna Treaty was enacted.
Dario Fo, the Nobel prize-winning playwright, said that applying the treaty more widely would even have led to the prosecution of Dante, since “he put a Pope in the Inferno as well, namely Boniface VIII”.
Marco Travaglio, a left-wing writer who also addressed the July rally, said: “At this rate Aristophanes and Rabelais would have ended up in prison for being satirists.”
Even certain sections of the Church are unimpressed. Father Bartolomeo Sorge, a Jesuit scholar, told La Repubblica the move to prosecute Ms Guzzanzi was incomprehensible. “We Christians put up with many insults, it is part of being a Christian, as is forgiveness. I feel sure the Pope has already forgiven those who insulted him on Piazza Navona.”
Here’s the website for the Italian embassy in Ottawa, and in Washington.
