Vatican, not Afghanistan, sunk Prodi

Nobody knew it at the time, but the fate of the Romano Prodi government that suddenly collapsed on 21 February was almost surely sealed two days before Prodi handed in his resignation, during what seemed to be a seemingly insignificant closed-door meeting with officials from the Holy See.

Officially speaking, the government failed after Prodi's allies fell two votes short of the majority needed to gain approval on a vote backing Italy's peacekeeping role within the NATO-led mission in Afghanistan. But while the debate over Italy's 1,900 Afghan-based troops may have been the final act in Prodi's nine-month tenure, the real culprit now appears to be Prodi's plans to legalize same-sex marriages in Italy.

Italian newspapers report that Prodi, Italian President Giorgio Napolitano and around a half dozen high-ranking government officials met on 19 February in the Vatican with several high-level advisers to Pope Benedict XVI. The meeting was called to give the Vatican officials a chance to lobby Prodi to remove the so-called "civil union proposal" from his agenda. At first, it seemed the effort failed.

While the transcript of the meeting has not been released, the local media reported that 67-year-old Prodi left the talks looking flushed. Asked how the talks went, the prime minister, known for his long, rambling responses, managed only a single unconvincing word: "bene" - Italian for "well."

In retrospect, it did not go well at all. Abandoned two days later by three proudly Catholic Senators, the Prodi coalition's modest majority in the Senate became a two-vote minority, and the Afghan security vote failed (the left-leaning daily newspaper La Repubblica noted that all three Senators had backed similar policies in the past).

Hours later, Prodi resigned. And when Napolitano asked him to form a new government a few days later - "There was no other realistic alternative," Italy's leading daily Corriere della Sera quoted Napolitano as saying - Prodi was able to pull one together with the support of the three wayward Catholic Senators and a few others.

After several long nights of negotiations, Prodi's backers and several fence-sitters all signed off on a 12-point plan for governance essentially identical to the plan he adopted before his resignation, save one conspicuous absence: the plan to legalize civil unions, including same sex unions - the one government plank strongly opposed by the Vatican - was nowhere to be found.

A spiritual touchstone for the world's 1.1 billion Catholics, the Vatican city-state is the world's smallest and least populated country with an ancient history that includes the legend that the apostle Peter was buried at the site. But it exists as in its current form, as an independent city-state, only since 1929, recent enough that no pope has been born since then (the 79-year-old Benedict was a baby when the Vatican became independent).

Nineteen twenty-nine is the year Italian strongman leader Benito Mussolini sought to reduce friction from Italy's 1871 unification by forging a deal to create the Vatican as a tiny, independent nation with fewer than 600 citizens and territory small enough to walk across in ten minutes.

The Lateran Treaty that created the truce granted the Vatican autonomy, its own legal and postal system, internationally recognized sovereignty and the military protection of the Italian state. In return, the Vatican agreed to stay out of Italian politics.

"The Church and the Italian state have endured a long and uneasy relationship since the start," University of Bologna historian Massimo Crippa told ISN Security Watch. "The Vatican is an absolute monarchy surrounded by a modern democracy, a state whose first duty is to God contained within one whose first duty is to its constituents or countries it allies itself with."

While Mussolini made the Vatican independent from Italy, there is some debate about the extent to which Italy is truly independent from the Vatican.

After Mussolini was deposed, Italy went through a steady stream of governments - Prodi's new government is Italy's 62nd in just under 61 years - and a single and unabashedly pro-Vatican political party, the Christian Democrats, provided almost all the prime ministers between 1946 and 1992, when the party was disbanded amid corruption allegations (Prodi himself is a former Christian Democrat). That series of prime ministers included the iconic Roman power broker Giulio Andreotti seven times.

The 88-year-old Andreotti is a polarizing figure in Italy, with allegedly strong ties to both the Mafia and the Holy See. The fictional figure character Don Licio Lucchesi from the film "The Godfather Part III" - a pro-Church political kingpin with Mafia ties - is said to have been modeled on Andreotti, who is the only active member of the current Italian parliament elected when it was first created in 1946. And, not coincidently, Andreotti was one of three Italian Senators who held the government hostage by voting against the Afghanistan security measure as a way of forcing a change on the civil union issue the Vatican so strongly opposed.

With the tiny Vatican city-state coiled in the heart of the Italian capital and more than 90 percent of Italy's population at least nominally Catholic, it may not seem a surprise that the Holy See has some influence over some Italian politicians. But true situation goes far beyond normal levels of power.

Many would argue that the Vatican's influence has slipped over the last generation - over that time divisive issues like divorce and abortion have become legal despite strong opposition from the Church - but recent events prove that the Vatican still wields enough power to have a direct impact on the affairs of the Italian state, and under the right circumstances it can even bring down a government.

That the issue that illustrated the point - the plan to give same sex couples some legal rights in the eyes of the state - was able to hijack an essential and poignant issue such as the Afghanistan-NATO vote makes the case even more striking.

"Anyone who believes there is a true separation of Church and State in Italy is not paying attention," one-time Italian parliamentarian and author Gianfranco Rey told ISN Security Watch. "There are many reasons why this kind of truce is less than ideal, but the main one is that it distracts from the business of running a modern democratic state."

The notion of the modern nation independent from both the Holy Roman Empire and the Church dates to 1648, the date of the Peace of Westphalia. That peace ended the Thirty Years' War and created the now-accepted notion of sovereign nation-states that should operate free of control from religious leaders and began the modern era in Europe, starting a chain reaction that led to revolutions in the US, France, across Latin America, and in Russia. But in many ways, having the Vatican so close prevented Italy from following suit and achieving complete sovereignty, as recent events illustrate.

Italy's revolving door of governments proves that politics on the boot-shaped peninsula is inherently unstable, making Italy a less reliable partner internationally and a less effective governor domestically. What is not clear is the extent to which Italy's unique state-within-a-city balancing act is one of the engines keeping that door spinning.

While the Vatican is a foreign government, the Church itself is domestic to Italy (and to everywhere). The Pope and other Church leaders have and will continue to lobby for just laws in every country, including Italy.

Believe me, nobody's afraid of being attacked by the Swiss Guard!

This was a very interesting article, because I was in Italy while this was going on and there was a lot of interest in what the Church was going to do about the gay marriage push, since the Pope feels very strongly about supporting Christian families and rightly regarded this as an attempt to undermine the family. There had been ugly gay-sponsored demonstrations outside the Vatican over it.

Obviously, what the Pope did was to get Catholic laymen (the legislators) to do their duty and not support an issue (or at any rate, the person pushing the issue) that could be considered a violation of Catholic teaching.

Supposedly, there's a document on natural law coming out that will explain very clearly that it is the duty of a Catholic lawmaker to abide by this law (which is considered the foundation of the codified law of the Church) and not support anything that violates it, such as homosexual "marriage," abortion, etc. I think we just saw the first example of that policy in action.

That has always been the position of the Church. While faith is a gift, God makes His law available to any and all persons of good will and they can know it and accept it through the use of reason. And God can and His law can be defended rationally. I'm really glad to meet another Freeper who remembers this, btw! Thank you for your response.

Yes indeed! When I read about what was going on, I realized we were getting an answer to the US problem ("Catholic" lawmakers who think that either the Dem or the Libertarian party line trumps the Church any day). When the document on natural law comes out, a lot of US politicians are going to have to do some heavy thinking.

Prodi retains power after Italian senate vote
Yahoo News | Februari 28 2007 | AFP
Posted on 02/28/2007 5:22:18 PM EST by knighthawk
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1792914/posts

Prodi reappointed Italian PM
al Jazeera | Februari 24 2007
Posted on 02/24/2007 8:34:08 AM EST by knighthawk
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1790363/posts

ITALY: We didn't mean it, profess Prodi's 'traitors'
The Scotsman | February 23, 2007 | PHIL STEWART AND VICTOR SIMPSON
Posted on 02/23/2007 4:33:38 AM EST by MadIvan
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1789691/posts

Italy's government loses vote (Prodi resigns)
News.com.au | February 22, 2007 05:24am | From correspondents in Rome
Posted on 02/21/2007 2:10:08 PM EST by Eurotwit
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1788697/posts

Italy PM 'to submit resignation'
BBC News | February 21 2007
Posted on 02/21/2007 2:04:33 PM EST by jmc1969
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1788693/posts

Italy for end to China arms embargo
ANSA | September 18, 2006
Posted on 09/20/2006 11:04:10 PM EDT by Tailgunner Joe
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1705325/posts

Italy will work for a swift end to the European Union arms embargo against China, visiting Italian Premier Romano Prodi said here on Monday. The arms embargo was imposed following the violent 1989 crackdown on a pro-democracy protest in Beijing's central Tiennamen Square. "Our position is not new because for years we have considered the embargo something which had more to do with the past than with the future," Prodi said. Lifting the embargo, he observed, "will not change the situation radically because China has become self-sufficient, if not more, in regards to arms".

Prodi wins reprieve but Italy doubts stability
by Stephen Brown
additional reporting by Nathalie Higgins
March 1, 2007
[Romano] Prodi, who quit after a leftist revolt on foreign policy, scared wayward allies into backing him in the Senate on Wednesday with the prospect of conservative Silvio Berlusconi returning to power after just nine months out of government... The nine-party coalition has fought almost non-stop since coming to power in May with the slimmest election margin in post-war history, on anything from troops in Afghanistan and a U.S. military base at Vicenza to spending cuts and gay rights. Some leftists are threatening revolt when parliament this month debates funding to keep NATO peacekeepers in Afghanistan. Prodi says Italy must respect its overseas commitments... Another battle looms over a government bill granting rights to gay and unwed couples. Some coalition Catholics will object, fearing it could clear the way for gay marriages. Leftists will come under union pressure to oppose reforms of a pension system which the European Union says a country with such an aging population cannot afford... Gigi Roveda, a 58-year-old from Milan, said Prodi relied too much in parliament on a handful of unelected life senators who boosted his tiny elected majority in the confidence vote... Prodi promised to make it his "absolute priority" to reform an electoral system stacked against strong majorities which is blamed for the political instability that has plagued Italy for decades. New evidence of an improved underlying budget deficit augurs well for Prodi's promise to bring the shortfall within EU guidelines this year. But he has done that partly with taxes that angered small business.

Raise taxes, don't cut the budget, undermine democracy -- pretty much the usual leftist shopping list.

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