Italy: Pontifical Opposition

Silvio Berlusconi’s recent string of bad luck is nearly without precedent. But you would never know it by looking at him.

His wife has filed for divorce amid charges that the 72-year-old prime minister had a sexual relationship with a girl a fourth his age and that he has solicited prostitutes. He elected to move the high-profile Group of Eight summit to L’Aquila after an earthquake nearly leveled the city and he was nearly forced to move it again after new tremors struck just before the talks. And the Italian economy is sliding deeper into its malaise, with more Italians out of work now than at any other point since World War II. Yet Berlusconi’s hold on power seems as strong as ever.

Italian political pundits point out that the Berlusconi administration’s stability probably says as much about the eroding influence of the Italian left than it does about the prime minister’s political acumen. Ever since the prime minister’s allies defeated the coalition led by former Rome mayor Walter Veltroni last year, the left has been in disarray.

After his defeat, Veltroni took over the official head of the opposition, calling for a kind of détente between the right and the left, a stance Berlusconi manipulated so effectively that Veltroni was forced to step down earlier this year, his once-bright political star badly tarnished. He was replaced by Dario Franceschini, a career politician who started out talking tough but who has so far failed to resonate with a weary public. Rather than pounce on Berlusconi’s weaknesses, the party has instead focused on blocking popular comedian, activist, and provocateur Beppe Grillo from becoming a candidate to take Franceschini’s place in an October vote.

But with the left dissolving into ineffectiveness, it does not necessarily mean that Berlusconi and his allies can count on an absentee opposition for long. A powerful dissenting voice is emerging from an unlikely place - the Vatican.

The Vatican, a tiny microstate completely contained within the Italian capital, has long held a key role in Italian politics. Ever since strongman leader Benito Mussolini created the Vatican city-state in 1929 in order to shore up his hold on power, newly elected leaders invariably sought the blessing of the pope. Many leaders have used relationships with Church leaders to assert their moral authority, and a small but powerful cache of pro-Vatican parliamentarians were often enough to sway key votes where the Vatican held an interest. As recently as 2007, speculation is that the Vatican was behind the fall of the government of then-prime minister Romano Prodi after he revealed a government plan that would have allowed for same-sex marriages, an issue the Vatican strongly opposed.
 
But rarely has the Vatican been as vocal as it has been in its criticisms against Berlusconi.

When the news broke last month that Berlusconi had had relations with an 18-year-old aspiring model named Noemi Letizia and that he allegedly hosted a New Year’s Eve romp at his Sardinian villa featuring scores of scantily clad teenage girls, it was the Church that raised its voice the loudest. The Council of Bishops called “Europe’s most amoral political leader in a generation.” The official Vatican newspaper Avvenire called on Berlusconi to speak specifically to the charges, while Famiglia Christiana, another leading Catholic newspaper, published a series of critiques against Berlusconi, some of which called on him to step down.

Ahead of the Group of Eight summit earlier this month, Pope Benedict XVI added his voice to the chorus, saying the world needed to be renewed “morally and culturally” and - in a thinly disguised swipe at Berlusconi, the official host of the summit - said it was necessary to have the right political figures in place in order to guarantee that the ethical and moral choices are made.

The government, meanwhile, has taken its own swings at the Church: using the G8 platform to announce a dramatic reduction in its budget for aiding poor countries, a key Vatican issue. Ranking government officials have all but stopped attending high-profile Vatican worship services in recent weeks, and whispers in the halls of parliament are that the Holy See may be overstepping its boundaries with its criticisms.

Without a viable political alternative Italians can vote for, it is unclear what the endgame in the pushing match between Berlusconi’s government and the Church will be. But with the two sides at odds and the stakes only likely to rise, it seems likely that one side or the other will emerge significantly weaker for its inability to brush the other aside.