Source: UK Times Online

Italian comedienne Sabina Guzzanti faces prosecution for insulting the Pope, an offense that carries a prison sentence of up to five years. She is accused of “offending the honor of the sacred and inviolable person” of Pope Benedict XVI at a rally in Rome in July at which opposition leaders accused Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi of passing ad personam laws to protect his own interests and avoid prosecution for alleged corruption.

Sabina Guzzanti

Speakers at the rally on Piazza Navona also protested against excessive interference by the Vatican and the Catholic Church in Italian affairs, from abortion to gay rights. Ms Guzzanti, noted for her satirical impersonations of Mr Berlusconi, told the crowd that within 20 years Italian teachers would be vetted and chosen by the Vatican.

She added: “But then within twenty 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.”

Sabina Guzzanti Takes On The Pope

Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, said that he had asked Angelino Alfano, the Minister of Justice, for permission to proceed with a prosecution.

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 Paolo Guzzanti, Ms Guzzanti’s father and a centre Right MP, said that the move was “a return to the Middle Ages. Perhaps my daughter should be be submitted to the judgement of God by being made to walk on hot coals”.

Antonio Di Pietro, a centre Left 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 peronally I didn’t — but to put people in prison for that they think is reminiscent of a time when those who thought differently had castor oil poured down their throats”, a reference to Fascism.