The Italian bishops' daily on Tuesday lambasted the "paint spray terrorism" behind a new wave of anti-Church graffiti in Genoa, including death threats against the pope and the country's top bishop.
The graffiti appears to have been sparked by the strong stand taken recently by the Italian Catholic Church against a government bill proposing legal recognition for cohabiting couples, including gay ones.
In a front page editorial, the Avvenire newspaper voiced deep concern over the social context that produced the threats against Pope Benedict and Monsignor Angelo Bagnasco, head of the bishops' conference and archbishop of Genoa.
"Is it really possible that we live in a country that is so excited and excitable, so hysterical and intolerant," the daily asked rhetorically.
After the words 'Bagnasco Shame on You' were scrawled on the doors of Genoa cathedral a week ago, the words 'Death to Bagnasco' appeared on a wall at the weekend, accompanied by symbols of 1970s leftwing terrorist groups.
As well as the anti-Bagnasco scrawls, leaflets with pornographic pictures of a bisexual Virgin Mary were found in the archbishop's cathedral at the end of Saturday's Easter vigil.
Earlier in the day posters appeared in the city centre showing Pope Benedict XVI shaking hands with Hitler or standing in front of a firing squad. Among the messages written on walls were 'Death to the Pope' and 'From Hitler's Soldier to God's Soldier' - a reference to Benedict's brief experience in the Hitler Youth movement.
"This is violence consisting only of words, but precisely for this reason it can pass rapidly from mouth to mouth and mind to mind," Avvenire said.
Italian politicians from the governing centre-left alliance and the centre-right opposition have expressed solidarity with Bagnasco, condemning the threats.
Security was stepped up around Italy's top bishop after the first graffiti appeared a week ago.
A police officer has been stationed in the headquarters of the Genoa archdiocese where Bagnasco has his main offices and police patrols in the area have been intensified.
In the meantime, the archbishop's aides are keeping city police informed about his movements.
Bagnasco was nominated CEI head last month and since then he has spoken out strongly against a government bill which envisages legal recognition for cohabiting couples, including gay ones.
In a speech on March 31 he defended the Church's right to speak out on this and other issues where it believed the good of society was at stake.
He evoked paedophilia and incest as extreme examples of what happened when the Church's precise ethical limits were lacking.
The remark sparked an immediate furore even though the bishops issued a note stressing that Bagnasco had not likened the rights of gay or unmarried couples to paedophilia and incest.
Not all Italians, the majority of whom are at least nominally Catholic, are behind the bishops on the issue of recognition for cohabiting couples.
A survey published in the Corriere della Sera daily earlier this year found that although 49% of Italians opposed the government's bill, another 47% were in favour.
Pollsters found that support for the bill would have been higher if the rights it contained had not been extended to gay couples as well as heterosexual ones.
