Italian Comedian Faces Jail Time for Insulting Pope

By Lauren Foley

Photograph by Riccardo De Luca © 2008 Associated Press

According to Times Online, Italian comedian and actress Sabina Guzzanti could serve five years in prison for insulting the Pope at a rally in Rome’s Piazza Navona on July 8, 2008.

At the rally, which was held in protest of the Vatican’s “interference in Italian rights, from abortion to gay rights,” Guzzanti joked to the crowd that “within 20 years the Pope will be where he ought to be – in Hell, tormented by great big poofter devils [homosexuals], and very active ones, not passive ones.” Italian law enforcers took offense at the remark, and are charging her with “offending the honor of the sacred and inviolable person" of Benedict XVI.

Giovanni Ferrara, a Roman prosecutor, is in the process of applying to the Ministry of Justice for authorization to take legal action against Guzzanti under the 1929 Lateran Treaty between Italy and the Vatican, “which stipulates that an insult to the Pope carries the same penalty as an insult to the Italian President,” according to Times Online.

But while some right wing Italian politicians are in favor of the prosecution (Christian Democrat Luca Volonte said that "gratuitous insults must be punished”), most are opposed to what Guzzanti’s father has called “a return to the middle ages.”

Italian senator Antonio Di Pietro defended Guzzanti, saying that she was exercising “her constitutional right to freedom of thought.”

"You can agree or not agree with what she said — and personally I didn't,” Di Pietro said, “but to put people in prison for what they think is reminiscent of a time when those who thought differently had castor oil poured down their throats.”