Vatican City: The Vatican newspaper today hit back at Italian parliamentary speaker Gianfranco Fini for accusing the Roman Catholic Church of failing to oppose Italy's 1938 anti-Jewish legislation.

Dismissing the former neo-fascist's remarks as "wretched political opportunism," the Osservatore Romano noted that they had "sparked surprise and great controversy".

"It is surprising and upsetting that one of the political heirs of fascism which was uniquely responsible for the infamy of the racial laws and from which (Fini) long ago admirably sought to distance himself now casts doubt on the Catholic Church," the paper said in an editorial.

Fini, in an address yesterday marking 70 years since the laws were promulgated, said: "Fascist ideology alone does not explain the infamy of the racial laws.

"We must wonder why Italian society overall conformed with the laws against the Jews and why with rare exceptions there was no particular show of resistance... Not even, and it pains me to say it, from the Church," Fini said.

Radio Vatican immediately rejected Fini's remarks.

Fini, 56,a former foreign minister, heads the right-wing National Alliance. He was the national secretary of the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement, formed by supporters of the late dictator Benito Mussolini in 1946,for several years between 1987 and its dissolution in 1995.

Fini, who in 1992 was still calling Mussolini "the greatest statesman of the 20th century", travelled in 1999 to the former Nazi death camp at Auschwitz, writing at the time that "no tragedy can be greater than the Holocaust".

Source : PTI