“There’s a fact that until now has been rarely considered. The Da Vinci Code came out in 2000, but had its greatest success in 2002 at a time of strong friction between the White House and the Vatican, opposed to the impending attack on Iraq. […] In those days, in the US, the scandal of paeodophile priests suddenly blew up. And this book, with a strong anti-catholic imprint and heavy leaning towards the feminist movement starts to have success. If September 11th hadn’t happened, the Da Vinci Code success would never have happened.” [Prof. Franco Cardini, University of Florence ¹]

Where to begin? Well, perhaps by rushing out to buy a ticket for the Da Vinci Code. Not to see the film – bring along a book and a reading light if you don’t fancy having to listen to hocus pocus new age mysticism debunking (fictionally of course) a hocus pocus traditional mysticism – but to irritate the fundamentalists whose response to child-abuse scandals is to suggest that the media/cia/dan brown/feminists/godless communists are somehow behind it.

Incidentally, when the film version of Dan Brown’s book received a critical mauling at Cannes, it was headline news on state broadcaster RAI’s news bulletins. When the film broke all box office records here in Italy, while the news made headlines in the international media, it wasn’t deemed newsworthy by la RAI.

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