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Catholic World News News Feature

Genoa cathedral defaced; gay activists suspected April 04, 2007

Vandals have defaced the cathedral of Genoa, Italy, in an apparent retaliation after Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco spoke out forcefully against same-sex unions.

The words "Bagnasco shame" were spray-painted across the main entrance to the cathedral of St. Lawrence in Genoa. The words appeared shortly after Archbishop Bagnasco, the president of the Italian bishops' conference, issued a statement opposing the legal recognition of civil unions, and saying that the government's failure to enforce moral norms regarding marriage could open the way to all kinds of perverse relationships.

Police in Genoa told reporters that Archbishop Bagnasco was being accompanied by an armed guard because of concerns about his security raised by the incident.

The president of the homosexual activist group Arcigay, Sergio Lo Guidice, declared “solidarity with Bagnasco in the case of the graffiti, but even more so with the victims of the archbishop’s most offensive words on pedophilia and homosexual civil unions.”

In related news, a vehicle owned by Tele Liguria Sud, a local diocesan-run television station in La Spezia, was also marred by graffiti. The words “No Vatican” and an anarchist symbol were spray-painted on the vehicle, which had been parked in front of the city's Cathedral of Christ the King.

In a clear indication of dissent within the Italian Church, the Turin newspaper La Stampa published an article in which three priests said that they were opposed to the Church position on the civil-union legislation. The dissent of Fathers Vittorio Cristelli, Aldo Antonelli of Aquila and Beppe Scapino of Ivrea was highlighted in an article that the anti-clerical daily entitled "We are Catholics and in favor of homosexual civil unions." Father Antonelli, in a particularly acrimonious statement, said that the position taken by the Italian hierarchy demonstrates "the Talibanization of the Church."