Italy sees controversial paedophile TV documentary

ROME, May 31 (Reuters) A controversial BBC TV documentary on sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests aired in Italy today as the country's media for the first time dealt explicitly and in depth with the issue of clerical paedophilia.

''Sex Crimes and the Vatican'' has for the past several weeks pitted right-wing politicians opposed to its airing against those who said censoring it would violate freedom of speech.

After much haggling, the head of state broadcaster RAI said it could be aired as part of a debate show called ''Year Zero'', but only if accompanied by balancing opinion from Church representatives.

Despite the compromise some conservative politicians called for a boycott of the state broadcaster for running it.

Isabella Bertolini, a parliamentarian of the conservative Forza Italia party called on Italians to boycott RAI for 10 minutes to protest against the decision to air ''a documentary full of lies''.

Some groups, complaining of a media trial of the Catholic Church, also protested against the decision to air the documentary, already been seen by millions on the Internet in Italy.

The programme marked the first time the issue of sexual abuse of children was discussed so explicitly on Italian television and was remarkable for a country where the Vatican still has great influence over the media.

It included two young people who claimed they had been sexually abused while they were child members of a parish group in Florence and claimed that local Church authorities did not investigate their claims.

LIVELY DEBATE Another woman described how she had been abused by a priest in Tuscany for 15 years from the time she was 10.

One of them called for a judicial inquest of the Church in Italy to decide how widespread the abuse was.

Bishop Rino Fisichella, who gave the Vatican's viewpoint, and Father Fortunato Di Noto, an Italian priest who campaigns against paedophilia, contested parts of the documentary and some assertions made by other guests who accused the Church of protecting paedophile priests.

During the programme, Fisichella, rector of Rome's Pontifical Lateran University, and others said it was unfair to single out paedophilia among priests when it was present in many other social groups.

The presenter of the programme, left-leaning journalist Michele Santoro, said that out of about 1,000 cases of reported paedophilia by priests, the Italian Church investigated only 10.

The BBC documentary examined what it described as secret Vatican documents setting out procedures to deal with general abuse of the confessional by a priest to silence his victim.

The original document, written in 1962, was updated in 2001 to deal more specifically with paedophilia as the Church around the world became embroiled in a string of sexual abuse scandals.

British bishops last year criticised the BBC, saying it should be ''ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict''.

Before his election as Pope in 2005, then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger headed the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrine.

REUTERS PDS BST0352