ROME – Amid a spiraling Italian debate over immigration, two personalities increasingly are coming to symbolize the opposing positions. In one corner is Pope Francis, while in the other stands ex-General Roberto Vannucci, increasingly perhaps the country’s single most polarising political figure.
Today a member of the European Parliament for Italy’s anti-immigrant Lega party, Vannucci took to his Facebook account on Thursday to reply to Pope Francis, who had used his General Audience the day before to describe rejecting migrants as a “grave sin”.
Vannacci’s response didn’t mix words.
“With all due respect, the Vatican has always defended its borders very well,” Vannacci wrote. “Why can’t Italy do the same?”
“The only way to reduce the deaths of migrants is to prevent them from leaving, reinforcing the concept that the right to stay in one’s own country prevails over everything,” he wrote.
The immediate media spin was both swift and inevitable: “Polemics mount between the General and the Pope” was a common headline.
To be clear, Vannacci is not the only politician in Italy who’s objected to recent statements from church leaders, including not just the Pope but also senior figures in the Italian bishops’ conference, on migration.
Yet because of who he is, Vannacci’s voice may arouse a greater-than-normal share of interest.
The 55-year-old former paratrooper and veteran of operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq exploded on to the Italian stage in 2023 when he published his controversial book Il Mondo al Contrario, which translates as The World Upside Down.
Among other things, Vannacci referred to homosexuality as “not normal” and told gays bluntly to “get over it.” He referred to Paola Egonu, a volleyball star of Nigerian descent who recently led Italy to the gold medal in the Paris Olympics, saying that while she might have Italian citizenship, her “somatic features … do not represent Italian-ness.”
Read the rest: https://catholicherald.co.uk/immigration-the-pope-versus-the-general/
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