The Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano (OR), has accused the Italian Government of lying to conceal its plans to put civil unions - including those between homosexuals - on the same juridical level as marriage.

In an unusually harsh article in its 9-10 December issue the newspaper said Prime Minister Romano Prodi's centre-left Government was trying to wipe out the traditional family with new legislation it intends to propose next January. "Christmas 2006: eradicating the family is the priority of Italian politics," said the unforgiving page-one headline flagging up the article inside the paper. 

"Fifteen days until Christmas. And there are those who are making other calculations, thinking of other deadlines," the unsigned OR article began. "We're talking about the first month of next year as the deadline for a senseless battle. A battle waged, unfortunately, even by those who would do better to meditate, perhaps before the representation of the Nativity."

The proposed legislation would grant registered, non-married couples inheritance rights, joint medical insurance, visiting rights in prisons and hospitals, the right to carry on one another's leases and the right to make decisions in case one partner becomes ill. Government officials say that such legal guarantees in no way jeopardise married couples, but were protecting the rights of individuals. However, OR called such assurance a "smokescreen" and "a lie".

The paper said the proposed legislation showed "very little respect for the family and a certain disdain for the intelligence" of the public. And it accused proponents of the legislation of being hypocritical. "They want to give public recognition to something that is entirely temporary and immediately revocable in private," OR said.

Italy's Catholic bishops joined their voice to the Vatican's criticism this week in what has become an all-out campaign by church leaders to stop the country granting legal rights to non-married couples. "This is the moment to be very firm on principles and institutions," the bishops' conference news agency, SIR, said on Monday. It criticised the Italian Government for focusing on "something that is certainly not at the top of priorities for the country", and accused it of bowing to "certain propaganda" that says Italy should imitate other countries that have civil-union legislation.

Italy's Foreign Minister, Massimo D'Alema, said the Vatican was overreacting and urged church officials to tone down the rhetoric. Franco Grillini, a parliamentarian and honorary president of one of Italy's leading gay organisations, chided the Vatican for making "apocalyptical" statements. But the head of the Pontifical Council for the Family, Cardinal Alfonso López Trujillo, called the legal recognition of civil unions a "capriccio" or a whim. "The cohabitants do not commit to anything, not even to stay more than a day in their union; they do not make a commitment towards children or society, but they are asking for rights," he said. 

Pope Benedict has denounced what he called a "false secularism" that will not allow religious groups to add their voice to public debate and that outlaws religious symbols from being displayed in public places. In a 9 December audience with the Union of Italian Catholic Jurists, the Pope said society was heading more and more towards an ideological secularism that tolerates only the type of religion that remains private. "At the foundation of such a concept lies an a-religious vision of life, thought and morality," the Pope said. He called it "a vision in which there is no place for God, or for a mystery that transcends pure reason, or for a moral law of absolute value, in force at all times and in all situations".

Pope Benedict said the alternative was a "healthy secularity" that reserved to the State its proper autonomy but allowed the Church to express its concerns on moral issues.