Italian intellectuals accuse Europe of being "anti-Catholic"

Following a vote against the European Commissioner-designate for Justice, Rocco Buttiglione, by a committee of the European Parliament over his staunch views on homosexuality, eminent Italian intellectuals have launched an attack on what they regard as widespread 'anti-Catholic' sentiment in Europe. The biographer of the Pope, Vittorio Messori, told the newspaper 'Il Messagero' that while "anti-Semitism has been eradicated just to be replaced by anti-Catholicism." Meanwhile, university professor Ernesto Galli della Loggia accused the European Parliament of succumbing to 'the ideology of political correctness'. Senator Alfredo Biondi, a member of prime minister Berlusconi's 'Forza Italia' movement, said that " intolerance from the non-religious is sometimes more dangerous than that from the religious."