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Italy’s powerful Catholic Church issued a blistering attack on the ruling political class on Monday, saying the country needed to “purify the air” caused by sex and corruption scandals that have given it a bad name around the world.
A speech by Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco to fellow bishops stopped just short of asking for the resignation of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who is battling scandals over parties with prostitutes and corruption.
While Bagnasco, the head of the Italian Bishops Conference, did not specifically name the prime minister, he left little doubt he was referring to scandals that have touched Berlusconi and his centre-right government.
“It is mortifying to witness behaviour that not only goes counter to public decorum but is intrinsically sad and hollow,” he said.
He said Italians had been left in a state of “dumbfounded astonishment” because of a ruling political class that was enmeshed in scandal and preoccupied with self-preservation while the rest of the country suffered from a deep economic crisis.
Until now the Vatican and the Italian Catholic Church have been hesitant to be scathing in its criticism of the centre-right, fearing that a leftist government could back measures it opposes, such as gay marriage and embryonic stem-stell research.
“The image is one of a country that is estranged, without impulse, as if everyone is waiting for the inevitable,” Bagnasco said.
The political class, Bagnasco said, had a greater responsibility to live a moral life and set a good example because their behaviour had “undeniable effects on culture and education” and influenced the young and impressionable.
Bagnasco said many in the political class were propagating a poisonous culture of seeing success as something that could be reached through connections and short cuts rather than hard work. He called for a radical re-think of the way things work.
“It’s not just a question of doing things differently but of thinking differently. There is a need to purify the air so that new generations, as they grow, are not poisoned,” he said.
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