ITALY
The New York Times

By DAVIDE CASATI
OCT. 18, 2014

On a clear, warm day, a motorcycle zoomed through a quiet, narrow passageway in the old section of Salerno on Italy’s southwestern coast. The rider slowed in front of an elegant house with a baroque stone gate just long enough to shout “Thief! Thief!” before racing off.

The object of derision, Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, was behind the thick walls of his house and did not hear the rider. But the insult would not have surprised him. He has heard quite a few. He’s been called a “consummate delinquent” and a “pleasure-loving prelate.” Even Pope Francis cracked a joke about him, saying that “for sure he did not enter prison because he acted like Blessed Imelda,” before calling events in which the monsignor was involved “a scandal that hurts me.”

Before his arrest in June 2013, the monsignor…