Too Close to Home

Notoriously, Adolf Hitler overcame his Catholic upbringing in favour of persecuting Jews and demanding unquestioning obedience to an arbitrary will. Disinclined as usual to pluck beams from their own eye, the denizens of Mussolini's toy city-state decided that anyone who hated yids, gipsies, gays and commies could be forgiven a mass grave here and there. Nevertheless, the clergy joined Jewish leaders in condemning a recent Rome funeral procession in which the coffin was draped with a Nazi flag, the parish priest distancing himself (and, bizarrely enough, his Saviour) from extreme ideologies favouring torture and genocide for those judged unworthy. A similar incident took place last year, and it remains as yet unclear how far future offenders will be deterred by the Church of Pacelli's moral authority.