Italian politician: Church kept silent

ROME, Dec. 16 (UPI) -- The speaker of the Italian Parliament said Tuesday the Catholic Church should have denounced the anti-Semitic laws adopted in 1938.

Gianfranco Fini spoke at a conference on the 70th anniversary of the "laws for the protection of the Italian race," the Italian news agency ANSA reported. He called the adoption of laws modeled on those in force in Nazi Germany "one of this country's darkest moments."

''Fascist ideology alone is not enough to explain these infamous racial laws and one must ask oneself why Italian society as a whole did not stand up against the anti-Jewish legislation,'' Fini said. ''And the same goes, and it pains me to say this, for the Catholic Church.''

Fini, a one-time admirer of World War II-era fascist Italian leader Benito Mussolini, first entered politics as a member of the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, when it was a neo-Fascist group. After rising through the ranks, he helped push the MSI into the National Alliance, breaking with its Fascist roots.

The Rev. Giovanni Sale, editor of a Jesuit magazine, suggested that Fini is ignorant of the history of the Catholic Church during the Fascist era.