ABOUT THE CHURCH AND THE VATICAN

Fr. Lombardi says Vatican
and Italian bishops conference agree
despite sometimes conflicting positions
taken by their newspapers



VATICAN CITY, Sept. 1 (Translated from Apcom) - The Vatican has issued a statement on the case of Dino Boffo, editor of the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire, who was the object of a personal attack by Il Giornale, owned by a brother of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Fr. Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office, told newsmen today that he shared the solidarity shown by the Italian bishops behind Boffo, even as he denied media reports of conflict between the Vatican and the Italian bishops conference (CEI) with regard to the Italian Prime Minister.

"I confirm that the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, spoke with Dr. Boffo to express his own personal solidarity," Lombardi said.

"Of course, the Holy See and the Church in Italy are in agreement about their respective competencies," he continued. "There is frequent contact and a relationship of profound esteem and respect between Cardinal Bertone and the president of the CEI (Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco). Therefore, it is futile to try and create opposition between them".

He explained however that "it should not be surprising if Vatican media and those of the Catholic Church in Italy take different approaches to ongoing issues in Italian society and politics, because they have different audiences and different priorities. It is obvious that Vatican media have an international audience, not just Italian, and also reflect the positions of episcopates in other countries."

[NB: Additionally, Giovanni Maria Vian criticized an editorial by Avvenire's Marina Corradi, claiming that she had likened the neglect of African illegal immigrants endangered in high seas to the Shoah. Corradi has written a reply to say she never did so, and cites her editorial textually to prove it.

In an interview with Corriere della Sera published yesterday (8/31), Vian also criticized Avvenire for its editorial positions critical of the Italian government's immigration hard line and of Prime Minister Berlusconi's loose private morals. Why Vian would go out of his way to criticize Avvenire in public - and erroneously, yet - is questionable, to begin with. It's not kosher at all!]


Luigi Accattoli offers a very sensible overview of the Boffo case:

The dark side of an old 'anonymous' attack
on Avvenire's editor - and why he should now
just tell us the facts about the case
by Luigi Accattoli
Translated from

Sept. 1, 2009


In the whole song-and-dance of the Feltri-Boffo duel - both old friends of mine - only one thing is important: what really took place in the case that Dino Boffo, editor of the Italian bishops' newspaper Avvenire, settled with a fine of 514 euros in 2004.

What exactly was the 'telephone molestation' for which he was cited by a court in Terni?

We know for sure that Boffo had explained the case to Cardinal Camillo Ruini, who was president of the CEI then, and later to Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, when he took over the CEI presidency.

Why should he not now give the same explanation to the public? I consider this the only interesting aspect because it would present all the facts of the case, after which everything else will be self-explanatory.

I will try to summarize what is publicly known about the case and what follows self-evidently in order to explain why I think Boffo should clear up what is not now publicly known.

When I read the attack against him in Il Giornale last Friday and Boffo's immediate reply, it was clear that Boffo would litigate, as he did announce Sunday and as his lawyers were supposed to do yesterday.

It was also clear to those who knew previously about Boffo's settling the Terni case that Boffo would have a good case against the newspaper for making allegations against him based on a pathetic piece of 'information' by an anonymous writer [previously sent to Italian bishops and some media, and dismissed for not being verifiable], but how such a suit would end up is, of course, not known.

That anonymous letter had been known for some time and not merely in whispers: Notizie radicali and Panorama both wrote about it, and it was all over the Internet.

Ans so, all that editor Vittorio Feltri of Il Giornale did was to generate new smoke that was more or less persecutory against Boffo, who was referred to as 'widely known to be homosexual' in the anonymous letter cited by Feltri who, however, made it appear that the 'information' came from police sources. [The Italian Minister of the Interior subsequently said the police never released any information about Boffo.]

It is now clear to everyone - regardless of who sent the anonymous letter - that it was just that, and not official police information.

That anonymous letter was sent to many Italian bishops last spring, although some say it was first sent years ago when Cardinal Ruini was still head of the CEI.

Ruini, along with the then CEI secretary-general Giuseppe Betori, now Archbishop of Florence, and Cardinal Tettamanzi of Milan, were cited by Il Giornale to have had 'indubitable knowledge... of the crime' allegedly committed by Boffo.

But sources in the CEI say that Boffo had explained the facts of the case to Cardinal Ruini, who was CEI president till 2007, and later to Cardinal Bagnasco when he took over. On Saturday, Bagnasco called Feltri's attack against Boffo 'disgusting and very serious'. Both cardinals considered Boffo's explanation satisfactory.

But I do think that Boffo should now make that explanation public.

It is true that Feltri did not 'discover' anything new but what he did was to bring it to public attention front and center, while inflating it. The public now has a right to know all the facts about the original court complaint that Boffo settled. After which, as I said, everything else will be self-explanatory.

It doesn't take much to see the journalistic and political reasons that motivated Feltri, without necessarily implying an active participation by Prime Minister Berlusconi in the activities of his brother's newspaper.

Also self-evident is the vast solidarity that Boffo has earned around him, including the full confidence in him that was reaffirmed by the CEI.

But the antecedent facts of the complaint will not be cleared unless Boffo himself does so. [NB: The court of Terni yesterday denied newsmen access to the proceedings that had to do with Boffo's case, only allowing them to make copies of the penal decree that imposed the fine.]

Boffo may well end up winning a suit against Feltri simply because Feltri cannot prove any basis for the accusations he made on the basis of the anonymous letter.

Boffo paid a fine for at least three telephone calls made on his cellphone in 2001-2002 to a woman or a couple in Terni, as reportedly gathered from Boffo himself who has not been quoted directly.

It's easy to speculate on the reasons that have kept Boffo from explaining the case in public. He might have paid the fine simply to end a contentious and embarrassing situation and to protect his own image.

But now, the issue is no longer private, and I am convinced he can clear it up. Let him give his version of the facts - which he described Friday as 'an event regarding annoying telephone calls of which I myself was the first victim' (really not explaining anything) - and we can all be behind him solidly.

Meanwhile, I express my own personal solidarity with him.



I personally have a problem with the manner Boffo chose to respond to Feltri's accusations. Instead of simply saying "These accusations are false - this is what happened", his frst reaction was hysterical vitriolic against Feltri - understandable in the circumstances, but unwise and not prudent on his part, without offering any facts to back up his outrage. He did so two days later, but without explaining the original court case itself.

I also find it questionable that both Cardinals Ruini and Bagnasco simply threw their full support behind Boffo, without calling on him to explain to the public what really happened in order to put a definitive end to the dispute, especially since they alread heard his explanation and had no problem accepting it. Transparency is very much at issue here, and both cardinals seem to be strangely oblivious of that - they have both been usually quite media-savvy.

The longer Boffo postpones explaining the antecedent facts as Accattoli suggests, the more his credibility with the public will suffer - which is not good for Avvenire and not good for the Italian bishops' conference.

I also think that out of 'delicadeza' [one's inherent sense of propriety], he should have stepped down provisionally as Avvenire editor until the matter is fully cleared up. It would simply have been a matter of days if he had decided to completely come clean right away, as Accattoli suggests.

It must be made clear that the sense of Feltri's rash accusations was that Boffo had no moral standing to keep pounding on Prime Minister Berlusconi's alleged libertinism in Avvenire, since he himself has questionable morals.

Even if Boffo happens to be homosexual, which no one of his supporters has addressed in public, that does not make him immoral nor sinful in the eyes of the Church unless he habitually practises homosexual acts.

The only reason I can think of that Cardinals Ruini and Bagnasco have not pressured him to tell all in public is that he may indeed be a self-acknowledged homosexual, and no matter how chaste he has lived his life, the very label alone applied to the editor of the Italian bishops' newspaper would leave Avvenire and the CEI open to all kinds of unsavory inferences. Human nature being what it is, that would unfortunately damage Avvenire's moral credibility - and nothing could be worse for a Catholic newspaper.