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Threats Escalate with Bullet Mailed to Italian Cardinal Opposing Same-Sex Civil Unions

By Gudrun Schultz

GENOA, Italy, April 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Homosexual activists mailed a bullet to the office of Genoese Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco Friday, in the latest threat against the senior church official over his opposition to same-sex civil unions.

Police bodyguards were assigned to protect Archbishop Bagnasco several weeks ago, after threatening graffiti appeared on his cathedral and other buildings across the city. “Death to Bagnaso” and “Shame on you, Bagnasco” were spray painted, along with insults against Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Camillo Ruini, previous head of the bishops conference.

Pornographic images of the Virgin Mary portrayed as a bisexual were left in pamphlets in the cathedral at the end of the Easter Vigil Mass, Catholic News Agency reported April 11.

According to a Herald Tribune report, a local newspaper said a photo of the archbishop accompanied the bullet, with a swastika scratched into the image.

Archbishop Bagnasco was recently elected as head of the powerful Italian Bishops Conference. Since his induction into that role, the archbishop has led a campaign against the government proposal to legally recognize homosexual civil unions.

The threats against Archbishop Bagnasco began after he issued a strongly-worded condemnation of the proposal to give legal rights to unmarried couples, including homosexual couples.

“Why not say no to various forms of living together, to the creating of alternative forms of the family?” Archbishop Bagnasco said, warning that legalization of homosexual unions would make it difficult to prevent the further breakdown of family life and sexual morality, reported Spero News.

 “Why not say no to the incest of a brother and a sister who live together and have children in Great Britain? Why not say no to the party of pederasts in Holland?”

The Communist symbol of the hammer and sickle accompanied the death threat scrawled on the cathedral, along with the five-pointed star of the left-wing Red Brigades terrorist group.

Carlo Arcolao, spokesman for the archdiocese, told Vatican Radio the threats came from “very small and psychologically weak fringes.”

See previous LifeSiteNews coverage:

Head of Italy’s Bishops under Police Protection after Threats from Homosexual Activists
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2007/apr/07041105.html

New Italian Government in Clash With Vatican over Homosexual Civil Unions
http://www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2006/may/06052409.html

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