Political storm in Italy over papal audience

VATICAN CITY, Mar 6 (Reuters) Italian opposition leaders accused the Vatican of meddling in politics after Pope Benedict agreed to receive Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in the run up to an April general election.

The centre-left opposition also accused Berlusconi of looking to transform the audience at the end of March into a papal blessing for his centre-right coalition.

Berlusconi will be just one of a large group of European politicians who have been granted a papal audience to coincide with a congress of the centre-right European People's Party (EPP) being staged in Rome on March 30, 31.

But the opposition centre-left, which is some 4.5 per centage points ahead of Berlusconi's bloc in the opinion polls, said the Vatican should have declined the request to meet the EPP group so close to the April 9-10 election.

''We respect and defend the right of the Church to address questions of values, but it is very serious to receive only one of the candidates for Prime Minister just ahead of the ballot,'' said Greens' Party leader Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio.

Fausto Bertinotti, head of the opposition Communist Refoundation party, wanted the audience cancelled: ''The Vatican should re-think this and if it does not, leaders of parties who have been invited should.'' Just how much sway the once-omnipotent Catholic Church still has over voters in Italy is an open question, with one survey in January indicating that a majority of Italian Catholics oppose their Church on some key moral and social issues.

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