President of the Italian Senate condemns 'unmerited' attacks on Pope Benedict

Rome, Italy, Mar 27, 2010 / 08:52 am

"Unacceptable and unmerited" is how the president of the Italian Senate, Renato Schifani, defined the recent "attacks against the Pontiff." Calling the media blitz on Pope Benedict XVI "unprecedented," he recognized the Pope's "decisive measures against pedophilia" and said that his "very rigorous positions" deserve respect and appreciation.

"This is why I don't understand, and we don't understand, the reason for these attacks," the politician said to a group of young people on Thursday, according to a Friday article in L'Osservatore Romano.

Schifani, speaking to the youngsters on constitutional values, went on to deem as "unacceptable" the evident "attempt to overshadow a moral patrimony, of traditions, of culture and of meritorious actions such as that of the Church with the instrument of the delegitimization that doesn't distinguish that which is good and just from the individual behaviors..."

He pointed out that the "most odious" of these actions "have been condemned firmly and with the maximum authority."

The president of the senate went on to defend the fundamental value of life as "the sign of the degree of civilization of a nation" and said that its protection "without ambiguity in all of its manifestations, preserving in it always the intrinsic dignity, is the essential task of every citizen and every institution."

In a message posted on the website of the Italian government following the release of the Letter to Irish Catholics last week, on behalf of the people of Italy, Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi expressed "all of the affection, closeness and solidarity" to the Pope, who "has often had to confront difficult situations that become motive for attacks against the Church and even the very substance of the Christian religion."