Articles by: Judith Harris

  • Op-Eds

    Economy: Fragile but, Even so, it Moves


    Eppur si muove – But even so, it moves, said Galileo Galilei after his trial. If the U.S. economy is hustling, and Europe’s is recovering after more than five years of the doldrums, Italy’s finally is showing signs of moving forward. Combined with a drop of almost 10% in purchases of imported items, sales of domestic products have risen by 7.3%. The government’s battle against tax evaders has made progress, and so far this year over last tax revenues are up by 9.1%, according to the financial daily Il Sole/24 Ore.

     
    The European Union Commission acknowledges that Italy is emerging from the nasty recession that began in 2008, albeit “gradually.” Its prediction is that the economy will grow this year by 0.6% (albeit a shade less than the government has been predicting) and, in 2015 will rise by 1.2%. “The EU estimates confirm that Italy is improving,” crowed Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan. “Their forecasts show growth, improved competitiveness, and above all improvements in investments and employment.”  
     
    The EU Commissioners also announced that they would make no specific comment on the Italian government’s economic policies until June, or conveniently just after the May 25 pan-European elections. These elections lurk noisily in the background these days because they are being viewed as a litmus test of the relative strengths of the big four political leaders. Former Premier Silvio Berlusconi on the right is on the warpath, putting his daughter’s name at the top even as a good number of his fellow party members object. The minority governing partner Angelino Alfano is fighting for space on the right while Premier Matteo Renzi, who is openly at war with the labor leaders of his own Partito Democratico, is somewhere in mid-stream. And the popular populist spoiler Beppe Grillo.
     
    To return to the economy, the products illustrating the Italian style and way of life are finding admirers in the newer boom economies. The slogan is “belli e ben fatti” – good looking and well made -- and this attention to quality is the branding trend Italian manufacturers are promoting. A hike in demand from Russia, the Emirates and China is already visible, up 45% to these countries in 2013 over 2012, and is expected to continue. Marketing experts who attended the fifth annual meeting in Milan last week called Esportare la Dolce Vita – Exporting the Sweet Life – promoted by the industrial associations Confindustria and Prometeia suggest that, besides quality, behind this is the notion that the products evoke the country itself. Fashions (shoes, eyeglasses, jewelry), food and stylish home decorating objects lead the pack. A newer market: Latin America, led by Brazil with its boomlet economy.
     
    Inflation has been contained, with a median of 1.2% in 2013 – the lowest since 2009 and an improvement over the previous year’s 3%. A signal of a possible return of foreign investors in Italian enterprises is the increase of 9.2% to 15.2% in 2013 over 2012 in the Societa’ Generali in Italy, whose field is corporate and investment banking.
     
    Taking a more intimate look at domestic accounts, the Campania Region is being admired because its health services budget has moved into the black side of the ledger.
     
    This hardly means the problems wrought by the recession are behind – on the contrary. From January to July 2013 consumption of gasoline dropped by 6.3%, meaning that, because the petrol tax is large, its contribution to tax revenue declined by almost 3%. The recession also has meant that, between 2008 and 2012, at least 9,000 companies considered “historical” because in business at least half a century shut their doors, according to researchers for the Monza and Brianza Chamber of Commerce in Lombardy. Consumption overall dropped by almost 8% between 2012 and 2013, Codacons reports, with the decline hurting above all manufacturers and retailers of clothing, foodstuffs and household goods.  
     
    Writing in La Repubblica, the authoritative Massimo Riva points out that Italy still has the worst public debt in Europe despite the fact that it is second on the continent in manufacturing. Labor costs are still too high, he says, making Italy less competitive. Obviously there are exceptions, he warns, but far too many Italian entrepreneurs are more stodgy and less innovative than their peers elsewhere. “The recession may be ending but the culture of the businessmen must change,” he concludes.
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    Premier Matteo Renzi Runs the Obstacles


    ROME – Next week former Premier Silvio Berlusconi , 77, begins his gig as social worker in an old folks home four hours a week. This punishent for his tax fraud conviction is sufficiently minimalist that Berlusconi is now back to attacking fiercely Premier Matteo Renzi , 39. Berlusconi’s weapon of choice:  the revised election law slangily called the "Italicum,” one of Renzi’s points of honor. In January the two had struck an agreement on the essentials of the bill, which in fact was passed easily in the Chamber of Deputies March 12 with 365 ayes, 156 nays and 40 abstentions. But since then the bill has been stalled in the Senate, and now Berlusconi threatens to renigue on their agreement. If so, Renzi says it will succeed even without Berlusconi.


    That is not the only problem Renzi faces, but he has an important ace up his sleeve. His two immediate predecessors were both distinguished men, yet both lasted only briefly. Appointed to deal with the recession, economist Mario Monti served as technocrat premier from November 2011 through December 2012. When he failed ("he was unable to explain himself," as one pundit put it), the professional politician Enrico Letta, 48, took over until February 2014. If Renzi is to succeed, the qualities which distinguish him from these predecessors are those which will keep his governance from being more than a brief interlude. Like them, he did not become premier as the consequence of a political election; other politicians, not electors, tapped him.


    Nevertheless a crucial difference marks his government. Before being named premier, Renzi won the backing of 68% of the three million voters of the Partito Democratico (PD), no mean feat. As party secretary, he has coaxed and bulldozed most--if not all--of the PD's entrenched power groups and old-line political hacks into supporting him. As a result, he has already remolded the largest single party in Italy into a more modern and flexible entitity than before his time.


    Sergio Fabbrini, director of the Luiss School of Government of Rome, sees Renzi nevertheless under permanent attack. Fabbrini believes that Renzi’s own group of MPs and senators, who represent a wide variety of interest groups, back Renzi only in order to remain in office as long as possible. Secondly, his governing coalition partner Angelino Alfano, who broke with Silvio Berlusconi in order to remain in power with Renzi, must continually demonstrate his independence from Renzi. Third, Renzi must battle the notoriously powerful megacrats for whom the ministries are feifdoms, no matter who is the official government.


    As a result, says Fabbrini, "If Matteo Renzi wants to govern the country for four years, he will have to act as if his government will last only four months.... He must adopt policies that demonstrate no uncertainty." And this is exactly what the go-for-broke, self-assertive Renzi has been doing. Even though the battle has been tough, as the incomplete revision of the election law shows, much is being accomplished.


    In March the government addressed the labor question, including measures aimed at opening the doors to the nation's 50% of unemployed under-25s. Renzi is implementing what he calls, in English, a "Jobs Act." (In English the term derives from "Jumpstart Our Business Startups Act," a U.S. law intended to ease financing for small businesses.) In the Renzi version, on March 12 a Council of Ministers decree indefinitely extended three-year work contracts, eased hiring of apprentices and permited more generous fiscal detractions for employers. Carrying forward some labor market corrections begun under both Monti and Letta, the decree incorporated proposals by both Confindustria (the association of manufacturers) and the trade unions, despite the open hostility both consistently show to Renzi. By May 20 the decree must be converted into law.


    The April goal was action on reform of the public administration. Renzi slashed overly generous salaries for top state managers as well as salaries for administrative underlings. His government continues to press to reduce the size, cost and authority of what some call an  "overly symmetrical bicameral legislature" by reducing the size of the Senate to reduced to 148 members--less than half today. A reformed Senate would not participate in votes of confidence or on the budget. This discussion continues.


    In addition, the Chamber of Deputies abolished the provincial governments that are the U.S. equivalent of counties in a 215 to 158 vote. Provincial delegates will no longer be elected, and their responsibilities pass to the regions and to local mayors. For Berlusconi's Forza Italia, this was a "coup d'etat." The financial daily Il Sole/24 Ore had reservations, calling it a halfway measure because, while eliminating the powers of the provinces, their administrations remain. "I understand the need to give a signal that things are changing," but so far the change is in name only, said Antonio Saitta, president of the Italian Union of Provinces. 




  • Tourism

    In Italy's Easter Basket


    ROME - Italy's Easter basket is filled with treasures. As a repository of works of art and archaeology, the nation tops the UNESCO World Heritage listing, with 49 officially recognized sites--more than any other country. Prehistoric wall paintings, Etruscan tombs, Hellenistic temples, Roman mosaics and paintings, illuminated medieval manuscripts, and Renaissance and Baroque paintings and statues are proudly displayed in museums and private collections worldwide.
     
    This rich heritage is the national wealth, but it requires enormous dedication to maintenance, all the more difficult given the age of many of the sites and the fragility of the geology, whose seismic risks are the subject this week of an important scientific meeting in Naples. What is to be done? For ideas, please meet businesswoman cum politician Ilaria Borletti Buitoni, 59. Since February, Borletti Buitoni has served as Premier Matteo Renzi's undersecretary at the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Tourism; before this she held the same position under the previous premier Enrico Letta. Reflecting that experience as well as looking to the future, Borletti Buitoni has just published a pungent book called "Con la Cultura (non) si mangia? Quello che avrei voluto fare e non ho potuto e perche'" (Can or can't culture help give you a meal? What I'd have liked to do but couldn't). In it she provides sketches of sixteen difficult situations she saw from inside the box of the Culture Ministry, and which hinder heritage protection. Among these she lists:
    . no provision for fiscal incentives for private projects;
    . the irrational disorganization of museum ticketing;
    . the failure to permit and encourage cultural volunteering; and
    . under development of archeological parks.
     
    In her previous book, she made a similar plea: "Per un'Italia possibile. La cultura salvera' il nostro paese?" (For a Possible Italy: Will culture save our country?) In that book, published in 2012, she wrote that, " For centuries the evidence of our identity and cultural industry were acknowledged all over the world. Its current vilification and neglect have been mistakes that have imposed limits upon the development of a type of tourism adapted to our country, and eliminated that sense of national pride so badly needed today." In recent years, she concludes, instead of being helpful, the tourism economy has pointed up our weaknesses. The appropriate cultural heritage and landscape of countless territories has been left unprotected, when not cemented over or completely neglected. The result: "A fair portion of the peninsula has taken no benefit from the new possibilities of development tourism offers."
     
    Pompeii has overly well developed tourism, but its years of moral and physical lapses are taken by some outsiders, perhaps erroneously, as a sad metaphor for the country itself.  Pompeii is a formidable challenge, with 1,500 buildings to be maintained, from monuments to shops and thermal baths and homes, plus 17,000 square meters of paintings, 20,000 square meters of plasterwork, and 2 million cubic meters of wall. All require constant attention, even as the ground beneath the city trembles with tiny, daily quakes.
     
    In 1800 BC the Bronze Age villages in the vicinity of Pompeii were destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Then, in 62 AD, an earthquake shattered half the houses of Pompeii. Reconstruction was still underway when the eruption of 79 AD completely destroyed the city. Moreover, while it is simple to bemoan the collapse of a wall at Pompeii, it is to be recalled that some of its walls have been exposed to the elements for 250 or more years. Methods of restoration and protection once thought correct, such as steel beams and concrete, are now accused of having aggravated the problem.
     
    Who has the responsibility for the tough job of maintaining the heritage? By law, the Italian state because the heritage is the property of all citizens. But, as Eugenio Scalfari, the 90-something founder of Italy's largest-selling newspaper, La Repubblica, wrote last Nov. 11: |"Culture, scholarly research, the cultural heritage, the public patrimony, the landscape--all these are considered optionals that one can do without. It's not so much about the expense, but about investments." By its nature, he goes on to say, investing in the heritage is not something that can simply be dropped without serious damage. "Unfortunately the conditions in which the heritage Superintendents work are as miserable as can be imagined. Personnel is reduced to a minimum, retirees are not replaced, services are almost non-existent."
     
    This is true. The past five years of economic recession have worsened the situation. Increasingly, however, those responsible for the Italian heritage are beginning to look to private sources not only as sponsors, but also as companies who give without getting a return. Everyone's favorite example is the Packard Foundation's thirteen years of generous contributions to successful improvements at Herculaneum. Another, newer example of private and public working together is the agreement signed April 3 between Italy's leading high-tech company Finmeccanica and the Ministry to donate innovative technologies and services to monitor and to protect Pompeii. Its subsidiary company Telespazio will watch over the site from space while Selex ES will provide sensors to detect danger to the stability of buildings as well as to the painted plaster surfaces. 
     
    Thank you, Easter bunny.
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    For Berlusconi, It's Social Work


    ROME - Every journalist and politician in town had been waiting to learn the judges' decision Thursday on what punishment would be meted out to Silvio Berlusconi, 77, the former premier convicted last December by Italy's highest court for tax fraud involving his TV enterprise Mediaset. Who could have guessed that, on the very day of his receiving a light sentence to nine months of occasional social service work, Berlusconi would be upstaged by his former right-hand man, the former Italian Senator Marcello Dell'Utri?


    In 1982 Dell'Utri was in Milan, taking over Publitalia, which controlled Berlusconi's TV advertising. A decade later he was in Sicily, helping build Berlusconi's powerful new political organization, Forza Italia, there. Only two years later Dell'Utri came under formal investigation on charges of mediating with the Mafia. After eight judiciary proceedings against him, just one year ago a Palermo appeals court sentenced Dell'Utri to a seven-year conviction for links with the Mafia (concorso esterno). He appealed the sentence in Italy's high Cassations Court in Rome, which is expected to deliver a verdict this coming week. However, suspecting he might flee the country before that definitive decision, Palermo prosecutors ordered his arrest. Unable to locate him, they supect that he has fled the country, as he had once before during another trial.


    In addition, Dell'Utri is reportedly implicated in the theft of rare books from the historic Biblioteca dei Girolamini, in Naples, whose 150,000-volume collection dates from the Middle Ages. Security camera footage shows its director, Marino Massimo De Caro, leaving the building with an armload of books. In January of 2012, De Caro was arrested for stealing at least 1,500 books, including one by Galileo Galilei. Many but not all have been returned, including by Christie's and an auction house in Germany, which had 30 volumes. De Caro is in now in prison and facing trial.


    Meantime the Neapolitan investigation led to Dell'Utri, who confirmed to prosecutors that he had received from De Caro "gifts" of rare books, which he agreed to return. However, Dell'Utri then admitted that he had "misplaced" one of these gifts, a copy of Thomas Moore's 1516 Utopia. He then admitted that he'd also "purchased something." No less an authority than the New York Times has alleged that "without Dell'Utri's support" the appointment of director De Caro (under culture Minister Giancarlo Galan in the Berlusconi government) - who had no college degree or other qualification for the job - would not have been possible. By the way, Dell'Utri's son is in a 50% partnership with De Caro, in an energy company.


    For Berlusconi, the question for months has been whether presiding judge Pasquale Nobile De Santis would put Berlusconi under house arrest or consigned on a trial basis ("affidamento in prova") into the hands of a social worker for a half day every week for the next nine months. Berlusconi particularly rejected the idea of house arrest because it would not allow him to join in the campaign for the May 25 European elections. In the walkup to Thursday's court decision against house arrest, Berlusconi had been briefly hospitalized in Milan for knee trouble which has obliged him to walk on crutches and may require surgery. His happy ending came about, said the court, on grounds of his age; that his is a "fiscal crime"; and that he has repaid the tax collectors.


    But not all has gone smoothly. In awarding him some form of collaboration with the social services, the court stipulated that it would be initially on a trial basis, and that if he continues to insult the judges--Berlusconi has accused them of having a "mafia of judges"--, he will be put under house arrest. In addition, in another move aimed at maintaining his active political presence, his reborn Forza Italia party made a formal appeal to the European Court of Justice seeking for Berlusconi to be allowed as a candidate for the May 25 elections to the EU parliament because otherwise "the voters' right" to elect him is harmed. The EU has just rejected that.


    Berlusconi accuses Premier Matteo Renzi of being unhelpful to him on this crucial issue (which implies that such personal help was part of their January private agreement on election law reform). This resentment surfaced in a conversation over an inadvertently open microphone. The speakers were Berlusconi's youthful new "advisor," former Mediaset TV talk show host Giovanni Toti, and another super-loyalist, Berlusconi's former education minister, Mariastella Gelmini, who is currently coordinator for the Lombardy's FI party. The video of their clearly overheard conversation has been a smash hit on YouTube and non-Berlusconi TV networks.


    Said Toti at one point, "He [Berlusconi] doesn't know what to do about Renzi."

    Gelmini: "Oh, I know."

    Toti: "Because he understood that this mortal embrace is ruining us, but he doesn't know how to get out of it. Then he's anguished about the 10th [April 10, the court's deadline]."

    Gelmini: "Oh, certainly."

    Toti: "A guy from La Stampa [daily] of Turin said that they [the judges] won't give him a damn thing, not even social workers. They'll just say, go home, stay there, and don't break our balls."


    But never mind--"Nothing to be embarrassed about," Gelmini said later. "This is no big secret." Toti too took the event in his stride and on Wednesday was complaining that Berlusconi was concerned that Renzi's Partito Democratico (PD) party was actually blocking the reforms the country needs.
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    Deadlines Loom: Berlusconi Future, Senate Reform, EU Vote


    ROME - Three deadlines are approaching on the turbulent Italian political agenda: former premier Silvio Berlusconi's future of either house arrest or social services; the government's proposed slimming of the Italian Senate; and a European Parliamentary vote that will be viewed as a litmus test of the relative strengths of the Italian parties.
     
    A decision by the high court is slated for Friday, April 10, on whether Silvio Berlusconi, following his conviction for tax fraud, will be assigned to house arrest or, as he notoriously prefers, some form of social service--preferably, the sort of a weekly or so chat with a social work counselor that will not confine him to his home. The issue is sufficiently dramatic that Berlusconi called at the Quirinal Palace for a private meeting Thursday with President Giorgio Napolitano. Berlusconi's somewhat humiliating goal was to seek presidential protection from house arrest, which would eliminate his possibility to campaign on behalf of his reborn party, Forza Italia (FI), for up to two years. Did the president agree? He seems to have agreed to Berlusconi's request for an audience, but by all accounts, to nothing more than that.
     
    The second deadline is a vote on Senate reform, whose outlines were agreed upon by Premier Matteo Renzi in a private meeting with Berlusconi in January. The reform would reduce the Senate, which currently has 315 elected members plus a small number of appointed lifetime members (at present, five), in power and size into an unelected regional body. Renzi's aim is to slim down and reduce Senate power so as to save money and to make Italy more efficient, by disallowing it to stall legislature passed by Parliament. Aside from his desire to whittle down the Senate, the January meeting was of vital importance for Renzi because it pushed Grillo onto the sidelines. Berlusconi took even greater benefit because it relaunched him onto the political stage as a major player.
     
    However, on Saturday Berlusconi called Renzi's current version of the reform "unacceptable and undigestible" even though, as Berlusconi acknowledged later in the day, he still considers Senate reform necessary, but in need of renegotiation.
     
    Elsewhere too the go-for-broke Premier Matteo Renzi is encountering unexpected opposition, including from the authoritative president of the Senate, the former magistrate Piero Grasso, to the point that Renzi has threatened to resign if his version of a much diminished upper house flops. The word "virtual" should be added to the threat: would Renzi really resign?
    And in the end, will those challenging him, beginning with Berlusconi, really stick to their guns, at the price of throwing Italy into chaos? According to a count by Reuters, the Renzi coalition would still have a theoretical majority in the Senate of 169 votes to 139--but not enough for the Senate to vote itself out of its present existence.
     
    The third deadline is the forthcoming general election for the European Parliament. This eighth European Union vote is particularly important. With 751 members representing almost 504 million Europeans, Italy will have 73 seats, representing almost 10% of the Parliament. The last such election took place in 2009, before the effects of the recession were felt. As the president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said recently, "We are seeing an increase in right- and left-wing extremism," or what other concerned pundits call "centrifugal forces." Certainly anti-European (and anti-German) sentiment is now more widespread than in any past election. The Euro is an easy target, and anti-establishment politicians here are blaming it for the recession. This is bound to be reflected in the vote.
     
    To take place in Italy on May 25, this will test the relative strengths of the trio of dominant parties. At the moment, Renzi's Partito Democratico (PD) continues to lead the pack, with almost 35% of the vote, but has begun to shed voters, according to a poll  by the reliable SWG conducted April 4. The Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S), headed by the noisy, truculent Beppe Grillo, is running second at around 20%, but like the PD is beginning to show a slight decline over previous weeks. Following Grillo's fractious party is Silvio Berlusconi's reborn, but already deeply troubled, Forza Italia (FI). SWG gives FI around 19.5%; Berlusconi himself claimed yesterday that his own pollster gives him around 22% while yet another polling organization, Ixe, gives Berlusconi almost 23%.
     
    What this means is that the distance between the parties led by Berlusconi and Grillo is now narrow enough that any prediction of what may actually happen at the polls is risky. One reason: the Nuovo Centrodestra, the splinter party headed by Angelino Alfano that broke with Berlusconi over support of the Renzi government, commands the loyalty of at least 3.5% of the voters. When push comes to shove in the voting booth, some of these may shift to Forza Italia.
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    To Obama: "Arrivederci and Come Back Real Soon"


    ROME - Predictably, no one protested louder than Beppe Grillo. Attacking U.S. President Barack Obama, who visited Italy March 27 as part of his European swing, Grillo said, or rather shouted: "He comes here to hustle his economy and to get himself photographed with the Pope. He's here to sell us his gasoline and because he's worried that we'll cut back on our buying the F-35s. And we stand idly by."


    By this the comic-turned-politician who heads the controversial Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S) was referring to the debate within the Defense Ministry over the purchase of 90 ultra-modern Lockheed Martin "warfighter" (its official description) planes under the U.S. Joint Strike Fighter program (JFS). The purchase is hotly debated because discussions begin this week in Parliament over cost-cutting measures proposed by the Defense Commission of Parliament, which include a revision of acquisitions, including under the JFS program.


    Do Grillo's rants on defense spending matter? To some extent, yes, because polls show that, with perhaps 24% of popular support these days, his tightly-controlled M5S is Italy's second largest party. Even more importantly, Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti has called for a "moratorium" on defense spending, which may cut back on 50,000 military personnel over the next decade. But on the other hand, President Giorgio Napolitano (with whom Obama dined Thursday evening) made a point of reminding the government and parliament that Italy must respect its commitments to NATO. Although nothing on this is certain, Minister Pinotti reportedly now agrees.


    On Thursday afternoon Obama met with Premier Matteo Renzi for a private, "frank and informal" meeting. Their agenda ranged from the controversial Italian purchase of F-35s and other defense issues to the crisis in the Ukraine, Italy's reform programs and need for economic growth, and the EU economy. Italian takes over presidency of the EU bthis summer for six months. On this viewpoints converged, and President Obama's message and manner delighted many.


    The EU and the US, he said, can and should work together to improve shared conditions for prosperity and security. "There's a lot of ambition in his program, and I'm certain that it will serve not only Italy, but also all of Europe. In a personal way," Obama added, "I'm struck by Matteo's vision and energy." Matteo? Yes, Matteo.


    Among the newspapers giving extensive coverage of President Obama's whirlwind Italian sojourn--just two nights and the day between--was the daily L'Unita', whose headline, "Obama: 'With Renzi as its president, the European Union will be very productive,'" was a far cry from the days when this was the Italian Communists' official party organ.


    "The challenge of relations between the EU and the USA is fascinating," Renzi told the press after their session. "Our grandfathers fought for Europe, and the US fought to save democracy in Europe. Now the EU must again become a place of stability and growth." Obama's message was authoritative, strong and clear, said Renzi, who concluded with his own admonition to his fellow Italians: "Italy will try to carry it [the Obama message] forward during the semester of our presidency--and we will be able to do so only if we carry our own weight."


    A few here lost no time in pointing out that Rome Mayor Ignazio Marino had not been included in the formal planning. Desperately eager (so said some) to speak with Obama, Mayor Marino went to the airport and waited on the tarmac by the steps to the plane when Obama was departing "to get a selfie," said one of the truly nasty. In fact, Marino issued the invitation, backed by President Napolitano, to return to Italy for a longer visit in June.


    To the extent that there was criticism in Italy, it was not of President Obama, but of the US press tendency to ignore Italy in preference to Obama's meeting with Pope Francis. Indeed their private meeting did steal the show, even as its content--fully discussed from the U.S. side but given a brief press release by the Vatican--left some puzzled and guessing whether basic theological differences between the US and the Vatican (read: Obamacare and birth control) may have struck a momentarily awkward note.


    However, the U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, Kenneth Hackett, issued a positive statement that, "The pope is leading people to a higher platform of 'think more deeply about what you're doing.'" In an interview with Vatican Radio, the ambassador said that a particularly striking aspect of the visit was "the role of the political leader and the role of the moral leader, and how they complement each other. I thought that was intelligent, wise and profound."


    President Obama confirmed that in his talk with Pope Francis the two touched upon difficult international situations in which the Catholic Church and the U.S. could work together. One area for their future cooperation is the battle against the global trafficking of human beings, which already involves Anglicans and Muslims as well as Catholics. Wide-ranging discussions on specific international crisis areas regarded Crimea, North Korea, Iran, Syria and the efforts toward peace in the Holy Land. "There is hope that progress can be made," Ambassador Hackett said, while acknowledging, "It is difficult."
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    Pope Francis to Mafiosi: "On My Knees, I Ask You to Convert"


    ROME - In a moving homily in a Roman church Friday, Pope Francis addressed family members of the Italian victims of organized crime here in Italy. "I ask you on my knees to convert--there is still time for you not to end in the hell that awaits you if you continue down the road to evil," said the pope, whose participation in a prayer vigil at the Church of San Gregorio VII was organized by the Italian anti-Mafia association Libera to honor the annual "Day of Memory" for Mafia victims.

     
    Emotions are running particularly high this year because of a recent spate of brutal killings which took the lives of several children. In Don Ciotti's list were 80 children, or almost one out of every ten of the 842 victims whose names were read aloud. Only last week hit men forced off the road a car near Taranto, then fired 15 bullets. Presumed mobster Cosimo Orlando, his girlfriend Carla Fornari and the three-year-old boy she held in her arms were killed. The hit men missed her two other children of six and seven, cowering in the back seat and now being kept in an undisclosed location. Earlier this year a boy of three was killed in a car in a similar gangland spray of bullets.
     
    There is little new under the sun. According to "pentito" Gaspare Spatuzza, a Mafia killer now turned state's witness, in order to punish a man who had testified against the Mafia, his young child was kidnapped in 1993, tied up "like an animal" and held almost three years before being strangled and his body dissolved in acid. Spatuzza admits having participated in the kidnapping.
     
    Leading the day's prayer vigil was Italy's well known anti-Mafia priest Don Luigi Ciotti. "In the past and even today, unfortunately, the Church has not always confronted a problem with such enormous consequences for people and society," said Ciotti. The Mafia is a socio-cultural, and not only a judicial problem, he continued, but instead of action, the response of civil society has been " excessive prudence, silence, empty words, " and to resist the idea and underestimate the danger."
     
    The problem has been neglected. An earlier anti-Mafia priest, Giuseppe Puglisi, was murdered at age 56 on September 15, 1993, in the Mafia-controlled Brancaccio quarter of Palermo in which he was raised. Father Puglisi had struggled to keep the children in his tough parish from becoming involved in mob activities, beginning with the drug traffic. In a step toward sainthood he was beatified on May 25, 2013.
    Back in 2007 Italy backed off from payments to Mafia victims and to those who turned state's witnesses--often women, often because a family member had been murdered.
     
    Speaking to the Mafia victims' families, Don Ciotti said that, "Investigating magistrates must not be left to face this alone," and specifically named Judge Nino Di Matteo, recipient of death threats from the Sicilian Mafia boss Toto' Riina, despite the fact that Riina is in prison in Palermo. Corruption and a swap for votes remain a grave problem, the priest said. Palermo chief prosecutor Francesco Messineo agrees. Speaking before the Parliamentary Anti-Mafia Commission last week, Messineo testified: "In our data bank are 5,000 names linked to Cosa Nostra. Many live in civil society. I leave you to imagine their strength in an election." Even local gas stations are under clan control, he added, with petrol columns that cheat on the amount of fuel.  
     
    Although organizations like the Mafia in Sicily, the 'Ndrangheta in Calabria, the Sacra Corona Unita in Pulia and the Camorra in Naples have historical bases in the South, since the 1960s they have penetrated the entire country. Last November in Rome one of the city's most elegant four-star hotels was seized by the judiciary because its ownership was an 'Ndrangheta mobster. In 2009 the famous Cafe de Paris on Via Veneto was similarly confiscated by the judiciary; last week it was burned in a suspect arson attack.
     
    The various Italian Mafias are now active throughout North Europe and the Balkans as well, creating what Franco Roberto, Italy's chief national anti-Mafia prosecutor, last week called "a judiciary emergency." The 'Ndrangheta--one of the most dangerous of the 300 Italian criminal organizations--is now present in 40 countries, he said, while the Sacra Corona Unita has links to the drug traffic and cigarette pirating in Albania and to gambling activities in Great Britain.
     
    Even as the Italian Mafias (in this sense a collective word) have expanded their interests geographically, they have also moved into other areas of activity: immigration, falsification of company budgets, money recycling. Meanwhile foreign Mafias have moved into Italy, recycling Asian drug profits into real estate and into chains of massage and beauty parlors that offer such cut-rate prices that they drive legitimate businesses into bankruptcy. Altogether, said Judge Roberto, there are some 3,600 organized crime bands, whose recycled profits amount annually to $165 billion, of which half in Italy.
     
    Roberto Saviano, the courageous investigative journalist from Naples, wrote in Saturday's La Repubblica that the Catholic faith and organized crime have long walked hand in hand, the Camorra inventing its legitimacy through an imagined special relationship with the church, and perceiving of no contradiction between church teachings and the violence necessary to protect "the family." One Mafioso explains that he was saved from a rival's bullet through the intervention of the Madonna. Another bankrolls the restoration of a statue of the Madonna beside a Neapolitan church, henceforth known as the "Madonna of the Camorra" (he was murdered shortly afterward). A boss's sister, knowing when a raid on rivals is to take place, retreats to a church to pray that the Madonna would intercede with God to explain that the murders were necessary. "This is the culture of the clans," says Saviano, hailing the pontiff's meeting with the brave Don Ciotti, and with the victims' families, the first pope ever to do so.
     
    Concluding, Francis appealed for "responsibility [to] triumph over corruption in every part of the world, and may justice prevail over iniquity."
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  • Op-Eds

    Memories of Rome, Bitter and Sweet


    The word “nostalgia” has bittersweet overtones, according to the dictionary. Applied to my thirty-nine years of Roman life, first in Trastevere and then on Via del Corso, indeed it does, but not always. There is no nostalgia for the somber colors of Rome in the Sixties, when buildings were almost universally painted a dismal barn red.


    It was a welcome step forward when city architects persuaded condominiums to lighten up, bringing us the fine pastel hues of today’s city. These lighter colors, which hark back to early l9th century Rome, give visibility to the elegant decorations that adorn almost every building surface.


    It takes time to learn to see all these fine decorations. For literally decades I walked straight past the windows of Palazzo Montecitorio, oblivious to the faux rocks that burst forth unexpectedly from the stone frames of the windows lining its sides. Bernini, who in 1653 designed the building (now home to the Chamber of Deputies branch of Parliament), had the fake rocks sculpted into these window frames to symbolize the force of nature.


    On the other hand, it would be hard not to have nostalgia for Sunday morning walks down Via del Corso. Between Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Venezia politicians of every stripe, from Communist to Christian Democrat and neo-Fascists, were on the hoof to buy the morning newspapers. Each carried a thick packet underarm, and most were willing to stop to chat a moment about the news. Although fistfights sometimes took place in Montecitorio, almost all were driven by a moral view of politics. They were willing to compromise or at least to be civil with each other; the devastation of World War II was still fresh in memory. Alas, the past has not bequeathed that constant awareness of a shared destiny.


    Recalling the ferment of the great artists of the past brings real nostalgia. In a boutique near Via Veneto, “La Callas” shopped between performances. Eduardo De Filippo was writing and performing in Roman theaters. At the Cinecittà studios Luchino Visconti and Federico Fellini were writing the history of cinematography; one could also spot the latter sometimes on the train to the studios.


    I interviewed Fellini’s wife, actress Giulietta Masina, in their home off Piazza del Popolo and, at Cinecittà, a charming Carla Fracci and delightful Peter Ustinov. It isn’t over, fortunately. The film that has everyone excited these days, worldwide, is director Paolo Sorrentino’s elegant, sardonic La Grande Bellezza (2013), starring Toni Servillo. As critic Robbie Collin wrote in the London Daily Telegraph , it records the Berlusconi era in Rome in the same way that Rossellini had recorded the Nazi occupation of 1944 and Fellini, the hedonism of the Fifties in La Dolce Vita. Its recent Oscar nomination is well deserved.
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    Celebrating Women's History Month: Nobel Laureate Rita Levi-Montalcini (1909-2012)


    ROME -March is Women's History Month, and our choice to celebrate is an exceptional Italian woman who had deep ties with the United States and international influence. Neurologist Rita Levi-Montalcini shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology and Medicine in 1986 with Stanley Cohen for discovery of the nerve growth factor (NGF), seen in the rapid growth of cancer cells. Her work has also contributed to studies of senile dementia.


    Levi-Montalcini was born in Turin, Italy, in 1909, one of four children. Her family life was happy, and she described them all as particularly devoted to each other. Her father was an electrical engineer cum mathematician and her mother a talented amateur artist; her twin sister Paola, with whom she remained close throughout her life, was a successful artist in Italy. It was a problem that her father, however loving, did not want his daughters' studies to interfere with their presumed future life as wife and mother. But Levi-Montalcini persisted and eventually persuaded him that this would not be her future course. She was therefore allowed to resume her studies and graduated from high school, albeit belatedly, at age twenty. She continued with university studies in Turin and was graduated from medical school with a summa cum laude degree in surgery in 1936.


    That very year, however, Mussolini imposed racial laws which prohibited non-Aryans from pursuing academic and professional careers. Her family was Jewish, and so she fled Italy for a post at a neurological institute in Brussels. But then Nazi Germany invaded Belgium, and in the Spring of 1940 she returned home, where she set up a research laboratory in her bedroom in the family home. One of her professors who had taught her previously, Giuseppe Levi, had similarly been obliged to escape from Belgium and returned to Turin, where he assisted her in the "lab" where she was conducting experiments on chicken embryos.


    In 1941 Anglo-American air forces bombed Turin, and the family was forced to flee to a house in the country. For a time they successfully hid there, but when Piedmont too became dangerous they moved on to Florence, where Levi Montalcini made contact with partisan fighters and the famous non-Communist Partito d'Azione. Epidemics of typhus and other illnesses were afflicting the Florentines as well as the refugees flooding in from war-torn Northern Italy, and Levi-Montalcini was assigned to tend to these patients in a hastily built field hospital.


    At the end of the war she returned to Turin with her family and to her interrupted academic career. However, in the autumn of 1947 she accepted an invitation from the University of St. Louis to continue her laboratory research there. From associate professor she rose to become a full professor, dividing her time between St. Louis and the Institute of Cell Biology at the Italian National Council of Research in Rome. Retiring in 1979, she continued there as guest lecturer.


    In 1968 Rita Levi-Montalcini was only the 10th woman to be elected to the U.S. Academy of Scientists and then to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican. In 1986 she became the second woman of the 20 Italians to receive a Nobel Prize. Levi-Montalcini was named a Senator for Life in 2001. As a neurologist she spoke a number of times about aging and the brain, saying once: "I've lost a bit of my eyesight and a lot of my hearing. At conferences I attend I don't see the projections and I don't hear well. But I think more now than when I was twenty. The body will do what it wants. I am not the body: I am the mind."


    Rita Levi-Montalcini died December 30, 2012.
  • Op-Eds

    "Showman" Renzi Delivers the Election Law


    ROME - It's a done deal: on Wednesday the Chamber of Deputies passed a revised election law dubbed the "Italicum," with 365 votes in favor, 156 nays and 40 abstentions. The bill, which now goes before the Senate for debate and approval, is valid solely for the lower house because the question of election reform has been split off from a proposed abolition (or at least radical reform) of the Senate, which includes a provision that, if it exists at all, it would no longer have elected representatives.


    The goal of the new law is to promote governing stability in a country where the political parties are locked in a three-way split. But Premier Matteo Renzi's point was also to show that he can make good on his promises to bring change. Immediately following the vote, he triumphantly tweeted, "Thanks to the women and men deputies. They have shown that we can really change Italy. Politics 1, Defeatism 0. This is change for the good."


    Among the surprise abstentions Wednesday was Scelta Civica, the party created by former Premier Mario Monti until he resigned from it last October. "The Italicum jumps onto novelties but an election law must have transparency, and this reform is not going in the right direction," said a Scelta Civica statement. "We hope to encourage renegotiation and an improved reform bill in the Senate."


    Curiously, a last-minute addition to the bill, backed by women and a few men from both government and opposition parties, had taken center-stage in heated debates during the past week. It had called for Parliament to have men and women members alternating on the election lists, but failed to pass despite winning the support of 90 MPs. To show that support, instead of waving placards and jumping from bench to bench (and we have seen too much of this already), all wore white to Parliamentary sessions. Less dignified was the reaction of the opposition party headed by Beppe Grillo, Movimento Cinque Stelle (M5S), whose raucous deputies held up posters of protest against the Italicum. On his blog Grillo ran a photo of Renzi as Mussolini over the text: "We're in store for a new Fascist era...a democratic dictatorship inspired by Gelli." Licio Gelli was the leader of the renegade, secret P2 Masonic lodge, and Grillo's attacks on Masonry are frequent.


    The revised election law was passed (with the provisions predicted here last week) thanks to the backing of former Premier Silvio Berlusconi, 77. Had it failed, the Renzi government itself would have been at risk, and so this crucial role made Berlusconi once again a player despite his conviction for tax fraud in August followed by expulsion from the Senate in November of 2013. Not surprisingly, Berlusconi, leader of the center-right, goes to some lengths to praise young Renzi, 39, leader of the left-leaning Partito Democratico (PD). Renzi, said Berlusconi, is "bravissimo," "trustworthy," and "got rid of more Communists in two months than I managed to be rid of in 20 years." Perhaps as a result, some here are whispering that the deal worked out in a strictly private meeting between Berlusconi and Renzi in February was not limited solely to the election law--and this helps to explain why in Berlusconi's Forza Italia party that enthusiasm is less than contagious--on the contrary. The same signs of hostility toward what some see as connivance are evident in Renzi's PD.


    But all that was yesterday's news. On Wednesday Premier Renzi also gave a press conference outlining his plan to cut taxes so as to revive the economy. As the journalists present pointed out, as soon as the economics specialists challenged a specific point, Renzi backed away, gazing instead into the TV cameras, his real audience. "He's a snake charmer," one sighed. "Albeit a good one." Among the economic measures under consideration for quick action are tax cuts for low income families, whose aim is "by April 27 to put 100 euros more into every pay packet", said Renzi. Asked where the money to fund his proposals would be found, Renzi responded that income from financial sources would be taxed at a higher rate. "Renzi has style," commented Stefano Folli, expert with the financial daily Il sole-24 Ore. "He's a showman, and he proposes novelties. But it's still a program, and no specific measures have been put into effect."


    Renzi also plans for the sum employers put into employees' paychecks for social services (IRAP) to be cut by 10%, a move that won kudos from big and small businesses. Even the usually truculent Susanna Camusso, head of the leftist trade union CGIL, admitted that she was not dissatisfied with the entire economic program even though Renzi did not bother to consult the unions. "There is a tax restitution to dependent workers, and this is a positive thing," she said. At the same time Camusso called for a reduction in taxes for low-income pensioners.

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