Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi on Monday came under fire from Church officials as well as his own allies for comparing himself to Jesus Christ.
”One shouldn’t speak of Christ in an improper way, it is not nice, it is not opportune and it is misguiding. Everyone should know this, especially politicians,” said Ersilio Tonini, a popular Italian cardinal, in an interview with daily La Repubblica.
Addressing party supporters over dinner at the weekend, Berlusconi had said he felt like ”the Jesus Christ of Italian politics. I am a patient victim. I put up with everything, I sacrifice myself for everyone,” the Ansa news agency quoted the
premier as saying.
Berlusconi, who only last week had compared himself to Napoleon and who once described himself as ”the anointed one”, later said he had been misunderstood.
But allies within his centre-right coalition remained unimpressed.
”It was just a joke, but I didn’t like it,” said Health Minister Francesco Storace of the right-wing National Alliance.
”I don’t want to discuss this kind of rubbish,” said Pier Ferdinando Casini, whose Union of Christian Democrats party enjoys close ties with the Vatican, when asked to comment on Berlusconi’s statement.
Berlusconi, a Roman Catholic who divorced his first wife to marry an actress, told a local priest he would give up sex until the April 9-10 general election at a recent election rally in Sardinia.
Latest opinion polls see his conservative House of Freedoms coalition trailing behind Romano Prodi’s centre-left Unione alliance. – AFP
