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Celebrities are notorious kiddy-diddlers, so it's no surprise that a wop Mary-worshipper celebrity priest should turn out, not just to bat for the wrong team, but to do so in the Little Leagues as well.
The message of this story is clear: don't allow your children to smoke the drugs, or they'll end up with a rosary-counter's hand shoved down their pants. And nobody wants that.
A "celebrity" priest, founder of an organisation with more than 280 drug rehabilitation centres around the world, is under investigation in central Italy for alleged paedophilia.
Don Pierino Gelmini is one of the church's best-known faces on Italian television, a close friend of top politicians including former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a rent-a-quote figure with right-wing views on drugs and family values.
In 2004, while still Prime Minister, Mr Berlusconi made the 80-year-old priest, founder of "Comunita Incontro", a public gift of 10 billion lira (£3.5m) for the organisation's work.
But yesterday La Stampa newspaper revealed that the priest has been under investigation, on suspicion of sexually molesting young people, for more than six months. "It seems that the accusations are numerous and coherent," the paper reported. "They revolve around a closed community in which a figure of enormous charisma seems not to have restricted himself to taking care of souls."
The priest's accusers are former residents of Comunita Incontro's centres with a history of drug use. But the magistrates have also interviewed many other possible witnesses, as well as Father Gelmini himself.
As news of the investigation broke, right-wing politicians rushed to the priest's defence. Maria Burani Procaccini, spokesman on families and children for Forza Italia, Berlusconi's party, said: "In our hearts we say that Don Gelmini is a saint. And we ask the media not to murder the innocent."
Don Pierino Gelmini is one of the church's best-known faces on Italian television, a close friend of top politicians including former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, a rent-a-quote figure with right-wing views on drugs and family values.
In 2004, while still Prime Minister, Mr Berlusconi made the 80-year-old priest, founder of "Comunita Incontro", a public gift of 10 billion lira (£3.5m) for the organisation's work.
But yesterday La Stampa newspaper revealed that the priest has been under investigation, on suspicion of sexually molesting young people, for more than six months. "It seems that the accusations are numerous and coherent," the paper reported. "They revolve around a closed community in which a figure of enormous charisma seems not to have restricted himself to taking care of souls."
The priest's accusers are former residents of Comunita Incontro's centres with a history of drug use. But the magistrates have also interviewed many other possible witnesses, as well as Father Gelmini himself.
As news of the investigation broke, right-wing politicians rushed to the priest's defence. Maria Burani Procaccini, spokesman on families and children for Forza Italia, Berlusconi's party, said: "In our hearts we say that Don Gelmini is a saint. And we ask the media not to murder the innocent."
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