Italy and the Church. Ruini’s rules

The political influence of the Catholic Church in Italy is growing

THROUGHOUT Europe, Roman Catholic prelates and politicians are giving up the fight to keep illegal most of the practices that they consider sinful. One by one, in former bastions of the faith, contraception, divorce and (with the notable exception of Ireland) abortion have all been legalised. But in Italy, once at the forefront of this liberalising drive, the tide has suddenly started to flow the other way. The 1978 abortion law has become a big issue ahead of next April's general election. And the Catholic Church is taking a more overt role in Italian politics than it has done for many years.

The speaker of the lower house of the Italian parliament, Pier Ferdinando Casini, this week gave the go-ahead for a parliamentary inquiry into the functioning of the abortion law, after complaints by Francesco Storace, the health minister in Silvio Berlusconi's centre-right government. Mr Storace, a member of the formerly neo-fascist National Alliance, maintains that the law was intended to minimise as well as to legalise abortions, but that this dual purpose has been forgotten. His solution is to let members of the Catholic pro-life movement into state-financed family-planning clinics.

A few days earlier, in an apparent pre-emptive strike, a group of opposition parliamentarians put forward a plan that may reduce the number of abortions that are sought on economic grounds. A proposed amendment to next year's budget would provide for pregnant women in economically precarious circumstances to receive between euro250 ($300) and euro350 a month for up to six months before the birth. Meanwhile, Mr Storace is engaged in a tug-of-war with mostly left-led regional governments over trials of an abortion pill, mifepristone, the use of which he seems bent on curbing by insisting it is used only by hospital in-patients.

Some of what is going on is simply electioneering. By championing Catholic causes, the centre-right hopes both to woo Catholic voters and to drive a wedge into the opposition centre-left coalition, which stretches from secular Marxists to progressive Catholics such as its leader, Romano Prodi. But suspicion is growing that the latest skirmishes may form part of a wider plan by the church to regain the grip on Italian politics that it lost in the early 1990s, when the Christian Democratic party collapsed in a welter of scandal.

Under the leadership of Cardinal Camillo Ruini, head of the Italian bishops' conference and vicar of Rome, the Italian church has become increasingly assertive. Cardinal Ruini recently spoke out against intermarriage between Christians and Muslims. Last June, the church played a key role in a referendum that sought to overturn parts of a restrictive law on in vitro fertilisation, which had been passed with the help of a cross-party majority of Catholic parliamentarians.

To be valid, referendums in Italy need to attract the votes of more than half the electorate. Apparently fearing defeat, Cardinal Ruini called on Catholics to stay away so that the initiative would be thwarted with help from the merely apathetic. His move was so blatantly tactical (and questionably democratic) that it prompted criticism from believers, including Mr Prodi and the leader of the National Alliance, Gianfranco Fini. But it worked. Only 26% of the electorate turned out to vote, so the legislation remained in force.

That showed what the cardinal could achieve even with parliamentary allies scattered on both sides of the house. After the collapse of Italy's old political order and the creation of two big blocks, some Christian Democrats found a home on the left, others on the right. But now Mr Berlusconi is putting things into reverse. At the insistence of the Union of Centre and Christian Democrats, part of his own coalition, next year's election will be held using full proportional representation. The individual parties will accordingly run separately.

Initially, they can be expected once again to regroup into two opposing blocks. But if Italy's next government were to fail, it is quite possible that a Christian Democrat-dominated centre might re-emerge, offering the nation salvation in this world as well as the next.

Article says that the political influence of the Catholic Church in Italy is growing.