An Italian Catholic editor who has been the subject of a sustained media attack by supporters of Silvio Berlusconi for criticising the Prime Minister's "immoral" lifestyle stepped down today. Dino Boffo, editor of Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), said his name had been besmirched "for days and days in a war of words which has wrecked my family and stunned Italians". He said the "defamatory" attacks by Vittorio Feltri, the editor of Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, had "violated my life" and amounted to "a desire to desecrate which I could not have imagined existed". Mr Feltri, who is leading an aggressive "counteroffensive" to "unmask" critics of scandals in Mr Berlusconi's private life, had unearthed a 2004 incident in which Mr Boffo paid a fine for alleged telephone harassment of the wife of an unnamed man whom Il Giornale claimed had been his gay lover, adding that he was a homosexual "known to the police for this kind of activity".
An Italian Catholic editor who has been the subject of a sustained media attack by supporters of Silvio Berlusconi for criticising the Prime Minister's "immoral" lifestyle stepped down today.
Dino Boffo, editor of Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference (CEI), said his name had been besmirched "for days and days in a war of words which has wrecked my family and stunned Italians".
He said the "defamatory" attacks by Vittorio Feltri, the editor of Il Giornale, the newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, had "violated my life" and amounted to "a desire to desecrate which I could not have imagined existed".
Mr Feltri, who is leading an aggressive "counteroffensive" to "unmask" critics of scandals in Mr Berlusconi's private life, had unearthed a 2004 incident in which Mr Boffo paid a fine for alleged telephone harassment of the wife of an unnamed man whom Il Giornale claimed had been his gay lover, adding that he was a homosexual "known to the police for this kind of activity".
I hope you're right. The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion, but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence.
Remember, they have other means of spreading the word beside the media. If they want to get rough, Berlu has less chance than Robert "Gamorrah" Savianno has of a quiet drink in Naples.
Wrong enemy. Really the wrong enemy. keep to the Fen Causeway
He is not a rational actor at this point. keep to the Fen Causeway
