ITALY: As Italy prepares for national elections, a new survey yesterday showed that a majority of Italian Catholics disagree with their church on some moral and social issues that have become hot topics in the campaign. The survey, by the highly respected Eurispes Institute, showed that, while 87.8 per cent of Italians considered themselves nominally Catholic, only about a third are "practising".
But more significantly, many said they did not agree with stands by the Vatican related to divorce, abortion, euthanasia, assisted procreation and the legal recognition of unmarried couples.
The survey, called Between Fidelity and Disobedience, left a big question mark over just how much sway the church can have over Catholics in the April 9th elections. "This means that in the voting booth Catholics will do what they want," Prof Gian Maria Fara, president of Eurispes, told Reuters.
The survey showed that nearly 69 per cent of the Catholics asked said they favoured some form of legal recognition of unmarried couples, one of the hottest topics in the campaign. Italy's centre-left supports legal recognition for gay or unwed heterosexual couples similar to that in France, which in 1999 granted all couples the right to form civil unions. French unmarried couples have the right to joint social security, limited inheritance rights and other benefits.
The church is dead against this. Only last week Pope Benedict forcefully told Italian politicians that it would be a grave mistake to legally recognise other forms of unions besides heterosexual marriage.
The elections will pit former European Commission president Romano Prodi's centre-left grouping known as "The Union" against prime minister Silvio Berlusconi's ruling centre-right party.
The survey also showed most Italians at odds with their church on abortion. The church opposes abortion under all circumstances, but 83.2 per cent of Catholics said they approved of the practice if the mother's life was in danger, and nearly 62 per cent said they approved in cases of rape.