Italian catholics rally to defend family values

Several hundreds of thousands of people demonstrated in Rome on Saturday, May 12th, a day baptised with an English name, 'Family Day', by catholic organisations. They had called for a big gathering to defend family values and to oppose the Italian version of civil partnership proposed by the centre-left Italian government. The journalist and writer Eugenio Scalfari, founder of the daily, deplores the stronghold that the Church has on Italian society. "The Vatican and the Italian dioceses have turned the Church into a very powerful lobby. They called for the rally in Rome in order to demonstrate their political muscle... . I wouldn't want to use terms too strong, but May 12th was a blow that weakened Italian democracy. Not because a great number of people united to express their support of family values, but because these same people were manipulated by the right and the Church."

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