Italian Comedienne Faces Possible Prosecution for Insulting Pope

[WSJ_law_blog]

The possible prosecution of an Italian comedienne shines a light on the Lateran Treaty, a 1929 agreement between Italy and the Vatican that says an insult to the Pope shall carry the same penalty as an insult to the Italian president. For Sabina Guzzanti (pictured), that could mean five years in jail.

Here’s what happened: At a July rally in Rome’s Piazza Navona, during which opposition leaders accused Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi of passing laws to protect his own interests and avoid prosecution for alleged corruption, Guzzanti told the crowd that within 20 years Italian teachers would be vetted and chosen by the Vatican. And then this zinger: “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.”

Giovanni Ferrara, the Rome prosecutor, said that he had asked Angelino Alfano, the Minister of Justice, for permission to proceed with a prosecution. Here’s a report from the Times of London.

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

This isn’t Guzzanti’s first run-in with the authorities. A few years back she released “Viva Zapatero!,” a film about the 2003 suppression of her late-night show RAIot, in which she had satirised Berlusconi.