And the Daily Telegraph

Mildly contrite Silvio Berlusconi woos the church with a nod and a wink
Italians might scarcely countenance it, but the braggadocio is slipping just a little.

By Nick Pisa in Rome

Over the next few weeks, Silvio Berlusconi, Italy's libidinous prime minister, is to play a role little seen in his testosterone-fuelled repertoire to date: the penitent.

Faced with a drip-feed of ever more lurid revelations about his private life, he has undertaken a mission to finesse his tainted image. The hope is to show Italians that he can act the responsible, devout leader just as well as the cavorting, septuagenarian playboy.

Mr Berlusconi is therefore resisting the temptation of spending his Summer holiday at his Sardinian retreat, scene of some of the orgiastic bacchanals that have got him into trouble in the past. Instead, in a reprise of one of his most successful domestic policy successes, he will spend his break overseeing construction in Abruzzo, the central Italian region struck by an earthquake in April.


It is an astute gesture by a man whose populist instincts are better honed than any other European leader. There is also sense in avoiding the Villa Certosa, a 300-acre estate that lends itself to moral turpitude with its whirlpool baths and hidden coves.

Taking his new-found asceticism a step further, there is growing talk that the prime minister will even pay homage at the shrine of one of Italy's most revered stigmatics, St Pio of Pietrelcina.

"The Lord accepts all and as the Lord said: "I have come for sinners not the just,'" a Cappuccin friar at the shrine near Foggia in southern Italy, told La Repubblica.

Observers suggest that through these stunts, the prime minister is seeking the propitiation of Italy's conservative Catholics, the only community that has viewed Mr Berlusconi's antics with a degree of disapprobation.

Even before the release of an audiotape recording Mr Berlusconi's nocturnal encounter with a Bari escort girl, Patrizia D'Addario, the Vatican had spoken censoriously of the need for greater sobriety in the government.

Italy's leading Catholic newspaper, Avvenire, yesterday condemned the prime minister in some of its most strident language yet.

Still, Mr Berlusconi is hardly donning sackcloth. With conservative Catholics lacking a significant political force to defect to, most observers reckon that Mr Berlusconi is only slightly chastened.

He still enjoys popularity ratings unrivalled in much of the European Union, and for many Italians the revelations have elicited either indifference or admiration.