(ANSA) - The pope's dislike of Harry Potter has done nothing to dampen excitement in Italy over the imminent release of the latest book about the world-famous teenage wizard.
Even though the book has still to be translated into Italian, hundreds of bookshops across the nation were gearing to sell the English version on Saturday, when it will go on sale across the world. Feeling the pressure from English-reading children and their parents, a few shops in Milan and Florence intended to stay open till the early hours so they could sell copies as soon as it was legal, midnight UK time.
The last Harry Potter book sold almost a million copies in Italy and bookstores were sure the sixth - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - would suffer no ill effects from Benedict XVI's poor opinion.
As the sixth volume headed for shelves this week, the Italian media was quick to highlight a 2003 letter written to German author Gabriele Kuby by then-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger. The cardinal, now Pope Benedict, wrote to her after receiving a copy of her book on Harry Potter, in which she expresses her concern that children can become fascinated with the occult through reading the series.
In the cardinal's letter, he praised the author's attempt to "enlighten people about Harry Potter" and the possible "subtle seductions" that could distort children's thinking. Cardinal Ratzinger did not say if he had read any of the Harry Potter books.
Italian newspapers covered the news lavishly, billing a clash of the titans between Pope Benedict and Harry Potter, coming only a few months after the Vatican railed against Dan Brown's bestseller The Da Vinci Code. "The new pope can't be doing with goblets of fire, schools of witchcraft, magic Olympics, schoolchildren that fly about on broomsticks and owls delivering mail," said La Repubblica.
Commentators agreed that the pope's objections were closely connected with the Catholic Church's fear of the New Age and the Occult, two phenomena it sees as related and as a threat to Christianity.
But there were few takers for the pope's opinion among Italian Harry Potter fans, in part because in the past the Vatican has appeared to have no problem with the wizard. Teenagers belonging to the Catholic youth association Azione Cattolica went on a pilgrimage last year wearing T-shirts emblazoned with Harry Potter's face and watched scenes from the first book being acted out.
Translator Beatrice Masini, who has rendered five Harry Potter books into Italian and is preparing to work on the sixth, was also clear on the matter. "There are no subtle seductions in Harry Potter. Good and evil are clear and distinct. The whole saga is a fierce battle between good and evil," she said.
