Catholic Church Slams Immoral Conduct of Italian Elite

ROME — Over the last several years, the Italian Catholic Church has largely looked the other way as reports emerged of a series of sex and corruption scandals among the Italian elite, many of them centered around Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But a recent published account of a party at Mr. Berlusconi’s home where one female guest performed a striptease dressed as a nun, apparently was more than the Church could stand.

This week the Church lashed out, issuing its strongest reprimands yet of Italy’s ruling class, deploring “behavior that not only goes counter to public decorum but is intrinsically sad and hollow.”

Italians “look on their public leaders with consternation and the image of the country abroad has been dangerously weakened,” Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishop’s Conference, told his fellow bishops on Monday. On Tuesday, he called for an “upright lifestyle,” saying that the country needed a “correction of habits and lifestyles,” to help it emerge from a “culture of nothingness.”

Though Cardinal Bagnasco did not single out Mr. Berlusconi — who is facing charges of having sex with a minor, is on trial in four separate corruption trials and has lately become embroiled in a scandal involving prostitutes paid to attend parties at his villas — the cardinal spoke of “licentious conduct and improper relationships that damage society.” And he blasted a governing class preoccupied with self-preservation while normal Italians struggled financially to make ends meet.

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