Joking about the Holy Father isn’t always funny, or a wise idea in Italy. An Italian comedian, Sabina Guzzanti, said nasty things about the Holy Father at a recent rally in Rome and according The Times of London account is facing prosecution for “offending the honour of the sacred and inviolable person” of Benedict XVI. Apparently this is some hangover from the Lateran Accords of 1929, and it seems that the trigger for the investigation may be what Guzzanti said about Berlusconi, with whom she has sparred for a long time, rather than Benedict. The emerging nostalgia for Mussolini-era fascism is the truly alarming development.

Still, the Vatican may want to get out in front on this and knock it down. Otherwise we’ll be talking about Danish cartoons and Muhammad, and of course, given my track record writing about the Holy Father, I may never be able to visit Italy ever again…
PS: Perhaps the Lateran codicil was a natural correlation with canon law, which, even after the 1983 revision, includes a physical attack on the Pope as one of six or seven (hard to figure out the exact number) actions incurring automatic excommunication. (See the relevant canon law here.)