With his marriage all but over, can Roman Catholic Italy keep faith in its errant prime minister?
From Philip Willan in Rome IT is generally accepted that the personal and political problems that have beset Silvio Berlusconi in recent months stem from an incautious relationship with an 18-year-old lingerie model, Noemi Letizia. The source of his woes, in reality, is a 52-year-old former actress who knows him rather well: his wife. It was Veronica Lario’s indignant reaction to reports that Berlusconi had travelled to Naples to attend Letizia’s 18th birthday party that propelled the premier’s private life into the media spotlight, turning it into the damaging political issue that has dogged him ever since. Furious at Berlusconi’s serial sexual indiscretions, Lario denounced his choice of young, attractive females as candidates for the European elections, accused him of consorting with minors and being “unwell”, and announced, on May 4, that she was seeking a divorce. The issue of the seemliness and acceptability of Berlusconi’s personal conduct in Roman Catholic Italy has been at the
