Integrity News

One of the difficulties of living a truly free society is that people get to say and do stupid things and we can’t stop them. I think it’s kind of ignorant and insulting to burn the American flag, but the Supreme Court ruled it was an act of “speech” and that our Bill of Rights protected such an act, no matter how terrible we think it is. Well, if we lived in Italy that could be a different matter. Check out this story and see if you would really like for America to follow the lead of other nations and start restricting our freedom of speech.

Comedian Sabina Guzzanti Insulted Pope In Poofter Devils Gag

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.”

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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 Italian President.

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The move to prosecute her over her anti-papal remarks was praised by some on the centre Right, including Luca Volonte, a Christian Democrat, who said that “gratuitous insults must be punished”.

However, many people were strongly critical. Paolo Guzzanti, Ms Guzzanti’s father and a centre Right MP, said the move was “a return to the Middle Ages”.

“Perhaps my daughter should be submitted to the judgement of God by being made to walk on hot coals,” he added.

Antonio Di Pietro, a senator and former anti-corruption magistrate, who organised the rally, said that Ms Guzzanti had only “exercised her constitutional right to freedom of thought.

“You can agree or not agree with what she said — and personally I didn’t — but to put people in prison for what they think is reminiscent of a time when those who thought differently had castor oil poured down their throats” — a reference to the Fascist era, when the Laterna Treaty was enacted.

Dario Fo, the Nobel prize-winning playwright, said that applying the treaty more widely would even have led to the prosecution of Dante, since “he put a Pope in the Inferno as well, namely Boniface VIII”. Marco Travaglio, a left-wing writer who also addressed the July rally, said: “At this rate Aristophanes and Rabelais would have ended up in prison for being satirists.”

Even certain sections of the Church are unimpressed. Father Bartolomeo Sorge, a Jesuit scholar, told La Repubblica the move to prosecute Ms Guzzanzi was incomprehensible. “We Christians put up with many insults, it is part of being a Christian, as is forgiveness. I feel sure the Pope has already forgiven those who insulted him on Piazza Navona.”

While it is a shame the Italians still have this law on the books, it’s great to see that many Italians understand what free speech is and are willing to discuss it. Just like Americans, they have laws on the books that say this-or-that, but we all understand what freedom means.