ITALY
Daily Mail (UK)
Priest burns picture of pope in CHURCH in protest at resignation as ‘rock star’ cardinals gather to choose successor
By Hannah Roberts and Sara Malm
Burning effigy: An image of retired pope Benedict XVI was set alight in a church in northern Italy during Sunday mass
It ought to have been the most serene of days for the former Pope.
But Benedict XVI’s first Sunday in retirement has been sullied by a village priest who burnt a photograph of him during Sunday mass.
Father Andrea Maggi, 67, claims Benedict, now Pope Emeritus, was ‘like the Captain Calamity of the Concordia who had abandoned his ship.’
Appalled parishioners in Castel Vittorio, a medieval hilltop village of 350 inhabitants, in Liguria, near the Italian border with France, watched at the priest set showed them a picture of the ex-Pope and then set fire to it with a candle.
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