Religious Left

Richard Owen in Rome The Times Online UK Angelino Alfano, the Italian Minister of Justice, yesterday Thursday said he had refused a request by the public prosecutor in Rome for permission to charge the comedienne and satirist Sabina Guzzanti with insulting Pope Benedict XVI. Mr Alfano said he had decided not to proceed with a prosecution "knowing the depth of the Pope's capacity for forgiveness". Speaking at the Catholic University in Milan the minister said that as a Roman Catholic himself he had been "saddened and shamed" by Ms Guzzanti's remarks. However she had accepted full responsibility for them, and he saw "no point in adding further fire to the flames". BACKSTORY full article

Richard Owen in Rome, The Times Online UK An Italian comedienne who said that Pope Benedict XVI would go to Hell and be tormented by homosexual demons is facing a prison term of up to five years. Addressing a Rome rally in July, Sabrina Guzzanti warmed up with a few gags about Silvio Berlusconi — her favourite target for her biting impressions — before moving on to some unrepeatable jokes about Mara Carfagna, the Equal Opportunities Minister and one-time topless model. But then she got religion, and 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." Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, is invoking the 1929 Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican, which stipulates that an insult to the Pope carries the same penalty as an insult to the Ital...

UK Gay News LONDON, September 9, 2008 – Justice Secretary, Jack Straw MP, is being urged by Peter Tatchell to rescind the license granted to the Roman Catholic Church for the exhumation and reburial of Cardinal John Henry Newman, on the grounds that it is “certainly unethical and probably illegal”. “It is morally wrong and arguably unlawful for the Ministry of Justice to grant a reburial license that violates Newman’s instructions to his executors and that gives a non-relative third party control over his remains,” Mr. Tatchell said this morning. “The Justice Secretary has caved in to Vatican demands and given the Catholic Church disposal rights over Newman’s body. “It not only plans to move his remains to a church tomb, it also intends to break up his body and distribute his bones as holy relics. full article

krqe.com BOSTON (AP) - An activist group hoping to pressure the Roman Catholic church into dropping its long-standing prohibition on women in the priesthood is planning an ordination ceremony for three women in Boston. The group known as Roman Catholic Womenpriests says it will hold the ceremony at a Protestant Church in Boston on Sunday. The group said the three women - Gloria Carpeneto of Baltimore, Judy Lee of Fort Myers, Fla., and Gabriella Velardi Ward of New York City - are responding to a call to serve the church. The Vatican has warned that women taking part in ordination ceremonies will be excommunicated. full article

Vatican Monsignor Tommaso Stenico allegedly had a list of homosexual priests and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church's governing body, Italy's Panorama weekly reported today (Friday). Father Tommaso Stenico, 60, had "a detailed dossier" of all the homosexual clerics at Vatican "with a list of names and circumstances implicating a certain number of priests and even bishops working at the Curia," Ignazio Ingrao, reporter for the conservative news weekly said. Should Stenico be found guilty of homosexuality, which the Roman Catholic church bans, he risks being defrocked.

A high-ranking Vatican priest has been suspended after a TV programme, using a hidden camera, recorded him making advances to a young man and asserting that gay sex was not sinful. Monsignor Tommaso Stenico, 60, is the director of one of the three departments that make up the Congregation for the Clergy, the Vatican “ministry” for the clergy. Yesterday he claimed that he was pretending to be gay in an attempt to unmask a Satanic plot to seduce Catholic priests to homosexuality and thus discredit the Church. “I only pretended I was gay to study how priests are seduced,” said Mgr Stenico, a frequent guest on television programmes discussing religious issues. “There are people who go after them . . . I really believe there is a diabolical plan by groups of Satanists.” “Naturally the matter is being dealt with by his superiors with the reserve due to the person involved. But they must act with the decisiveness and severity warranted by behaviour that is incompatible with priestly servi...