The government and national motorway authorities ran for cover on Wednesday after a public tongue-lashing from a top Vatican cardinal over hold-ups and roadworks on a key southern highway.
Cardinal Renato Martino, head of the Vatican's 'Justice and Peace' department, expressed his indignation after taking five hours to cover 200km recently while travelling on the A3 motorway between Salerno and Reggio Calabria.
"It was a real Via Crucis," the prelate said in an interview with Corriere della Sera, adding that he wanted to protest "as a citizen and as road-user".
"My experience was scarcely bearable. It was one interminable building site, continual detours, no possibility to plan a break at a service station, everyone stuck in a line under a blazing sun".
The A3 motorway has been undergoing work to widen it for several years. In recent days problems have been heightened by brush and forest fires which forced sections to be closed and traffic diverted.
Infrastructure Minister Antonio Di Pietro admitted that the situation on the A3 would even test the patience of "The Almighty" but he noted that something had changed lately.
"Up to now you couldn't use much of the motorway because the road was broken. Now you can't use it because they're mending it," he said, adding that much of the current work would be finished by the end of the summer.
Cardinal Martino, who was born in Salerno, near Naples, said he often used the motorway and frequently saw sections of road closed for works but with no one doing any.
He strongly implied that the Mafia was involved in spinning out the work for as long as possible and said the result was a symbol of the south's "resigned" attitude to its woes.
"Where are the politicians? Is it possible that we southerners can't demand a bit of respect from those that govern us?"
COMMITTED TO 'MODERN' HIGHWAY.
ANAS, the national road agency, released a response to the prelate's complaints, firmly denying that it had a resigned attitude and vowing its commitment to a "modern, secure and fluid" highway between Salerno and Reggio.
The 450-km motorway was opened in 1974 and unusually for Italy it is a toll-free highway. It carries a heavy traffic-load, especially in summer, and work to modernise and widen it has been going on intermittently for years.
ANAS said that in the last year the fully completed sections went up from 131 kilometres to 166. It also promised that from tomorrow users would be offered "boosted information and support".
The Italian cardinal's outburst won applause from the head of the regional government in Calabria, Agazio Loiero, who said the part of the motorway in his region was even worse than the one on which the prelate travelled.
"This highway is a symbol of all the work which hasn't been done or which has been done badly in the south," he said.
"It was supposed to shorten the distance between north and south but these eternal roadworks have made the south more cut off than ever," he added.
