Letter From Rome

Dante disliked his contemporary Pope Boniface VIII so much that he put him in the Eighth Circle of Inferno among the "simoniacs," the abusers of church power--sinners who were buried head-down, feet on fire, next to the pimps and the fraudsters. When Italy's long-tottering center-left government finally fell in late January with Silvio Berlusconi rubbing his hands in the wings, the Eighth Circle seemed to sum up Italy's predicament.

The government's downfall began with Justice Minister Clemente Mastella, leader of a tiny Christian Democratic faction that got just 1.4 percent of the vote in the 2006 elections. Mastella resigned after he learned that he and his wife, a regional politician, were under judicial investigation, then abruptly announced he would oppose the government. Without Mastella's three seats in the Senate, Prime Minister Romano Prodi's government was doomed. In his twenty-month tenure, Prodi had learned to live with a one-vote margin in the upper house--but every vote had been a cliffhanger.

This time, the red plush and gilt Senate chamber exploded like a stadium full of drunken, brawling soccer fans. When one of Mastella's party colleagues announced he would remain loyal to Prodi after all, a senator from the far-right Alleanza Nazionale, wearing shades and popping a champagne cork in anticipation of the government's defeat, yelled out, "You fairy, you dirty faggot!" The center-right joined the chorus, while a second Mastella senator went ballistic, screaming and spitting at his colleague, until the first man fainted and had to be carried off on a stretcher.

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