A daily owned by the family of Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi on Friday accused the editor of the Italian bishops daily of hypocrisy in criticising the premier’s allegedly immoral lifestyle, says Italian wire service ANSA.

Under the front-page banner headline The Supermoralist Condemned For Harassment, Il Giornale reported that Avvenire editor Dino Boffo had plea-bargained a 516-euro fine in 2004 for pestering a woman in the winter 2001-2002 to leave her husband, with whom he was in a relationship.

Boffo, 57, who has penned editorials on the premier’s friendship with a teenage girl and a prostitute’s claims she slept with him, condemned the attack as ”barbaric”. He claimed he had been the ”first victim” in the phone-call affair.

The Italian bishops association (CEI) issued a statement confirming ”full confidence” in Boffo and praised him for editing Avvenire with ”indisputable professional ability, balance and prudence”.

The Il Giornale article was accompanied by an opinion piece by editor Vittorio Feltri, entitled Why We Are Unmasking The Moralists.

”With the premise that we have nothing against homosexuals,” he wrote, ”the fact remains that the editor of Avvenire is not fit to launch furious anathema against other sinners”.

The Il Giornale attack came on the same day Berlusconi cancelled a much-anticipated attendance at a high-profile Catholic ‘repentance’ Mass.

Read the full story here.

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