Further to our last post, the documentary on Sex Crimes and the Vatican was shown on RAI due’s Anno Zero programme – albeit a week late, after the programme’s presenter took the opportunity to double check the documentary’s accuracy in the face of heavy criticism from the Vatican and various politicians.

Despite the heavy insinuations, prior to the documentary’s screening, that it contained blatant errors – most particularly in ascribing the authorship of the Vatican document Crimen Sollicitationis to Ratzinger (something the documentary never does) – the best criticism that Mons.Rino Fisichella, a key member of the cosy congregation for the doctrine of faith, could come up with were a) that the film was one-sided, and didn’t present the church’s position on the cases detailed. A valid criticism, perhaps, were it not for the fact that the Vatican refused to participate in the documentary despite repeated requests.

How and ever. The film was shown, and rather than opening up a national debate on the Church’s handling of the hundreds of cases of child abuse by priests wordlwide (including Italy – not that it’s much publicised), instead the press was dominated by opinion pieces on whether programme presenter Michele Santoro had been a balanced host.

One thing the showing of the film highlighted, once again, as noted by satirist/activist (there must be a neologism waiting out there – sactavist sounds particularly unpleasant) Beppe Grillo is the asymmetry of information in modern Italy.

The BBC film had been shown online in English over a year ago – so any Italian fluent in English, and posessing a decent internet connection had access to the information.

Subsequently the film was given a non-official translation and posted on YouTube, getting thousands of hits. Up to two million italians are estimated to have seen the film up to a month before it was bought by RAI to show. So at the second level of information, anyone with an internet connection and a bit of youtube savvy had access to the information.

Finally, the film was belatedly shown on RAI, to an audience of up to five million, after much protest and political pressure. At that point, presuming you haven’t been scared away by smears on the part of the accused party, the information is accessible to all with a t.v.

If you want to get relatively unfiltered information in modern italy you need to brush up on the three i’s, according to Grillo: Inglese, Informatica, e Internet – or English, I.T, and Internet.