BBC NEWSAmericasAfricaEuropeMiddle EastSouth AsiaAsia PacificRussianPolishAlbanianGreekCzechUkrainianSerbianTurkishRomanian
BBCiNEWS  SPORT  WEATHER  WORLD SERVICE  A-Z INDEX    

BBC News World Edition
 You are in: Europe 
News Front Page
Africa
Americas
Asia-Pacific
Europe
Middle East
South Asia
UK
Business
Entertainment
Science/Nature
Technology
Health
-------------
Talking Point
-------------
Country Profiles
In Depth
-------------
Programmes
-------------
BBC Sport
News image
BBC Weather
News image
SERVICES
-------------
LANGUAGES
EDITIONS
Wednesday, 10 July, 2002, 11:49 GMT 12:49 UK
Italy gags 'porno' Virgin Mary sites
Virgin Mary apparently cries tears of blood in Italy
The Madonna is highly esteemed in Italy
Italian police have wiped the content from five internet sites which they say insulted both God and Virgin Mary with blasphemous language and pornographic images.

Content on one of the offending web sites is replaced with a police symbol
Italian police stripped out allegedly blasphemous content
The sites, created in Rome and hosted by internet service providers in the United States, were brought to the attention of the authorities by a Vatican-controlled newspaper over a year ago.

In an operation police hailed as "brilliant", they removed the content from the site and replaced it with the symbol of the special unit involved.

Blasphemy is illegal in Catholic Italy. While bad language has been decriminalised, it still remains an offence to broadcast sacrilegious content.

Police said their censoring of the sites was done so that the "precious freedom of expression" was not used to offend "the dignity of people".

Censoring the net

According to the police, both God and Mary were described in unholy terms, and images of sex scenes appeared next to their names.


At these addresses the names of God and the Madonna were linked to explicit images of sex

Police statement

A man from Rome may be charged, although it remains unclear what the charges would be.

The Italian authorities are not the first in Europe to try to censor web material posted on foreign internet providers.

In France, the US-based internet service provider Yahoo was ordered to ban the sale of Nazi memorabilia on its pages, following a court case brought by French anti-racism groups.

German legal authorities have also ruled that websites aiming racist propaganda at German audiences could be prosecuted under German law.

See also:

05 Jul 02 | Asia-Pacific
03 Jan 01 | Science/Nature
14 Sep 00 | UK
Internet links:


The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites

Links to more Europe stories are at the foot of the page.


News image
News imageE-mail this story to a friend

Links to more Europe stories

News imageNews imageNews image
News image
© BBCNews image^^ Back to top

News Front Page | Africa | Americas | Asia-Pacific | Europe | Middle East |
South Asia | UK | Business | Entertainment | Science/Nature |
Technology | Health | Talking Point | Country Profiles | In Depth |
Programmes