It is not the first time that the Vatican has made its voice heard on such a delicate and divisive issue as the one dealt with by the Zan bill, namely the fight against homotransphobia. The “precedent” dates back to more than 50 years ago, when the Christian Democrat Mariano Rumor was in Palazzo Chigi, in his second term. It was December 1970 and the political debate was ignited by the law on the introduction of divorce, known as ‘Fortuna-Baslini’, named after the two deputies, the socialist Loris Fortuna, and the liberal Antonio Baslini, the first signatories of the law, which were combined in the course of a long process of parliamentary approval after years of conflicts and social tensions.
The text was definitively approved by the Chamber on December 1, Tuesday, at the end of an 18-hour session. “On 22 December 1970 – Stefano Andreotti, third son of the former DC leader, seven times president of the Council, revealed to beraking latest news – the Holy See issued a note verbale in response to the note brought to them by the then Italian ambassador to the Holy See , Gian Franco Pompei, who informed the Vatican of the approval of the Fortuna-Baslini law. In this note it is written verbatim: ‘It was never, nor is it evidently, the intention of the Holy See to illegitimately interfere in the area reserved for the sovereignty of the Italian state’. This is a notation – explains the third son of the former prime minister – found in my father’s diaries relating to the 70s, entitled ‘The diaries of the lead years’, forthcoming for’ Solferino “