Indulging Berlusconi - The Italian PM is planning to have his sins absolved at L'Aquila's Perdonanza festival. But will it save him?

Is Silvio Berlusconi about to cash in on one of Roman Catholicism's more questionable practices? Italy's prime minister, beset by sex scandal, is to take part in the 715th Perdonanza, to be held on Friday in the earthquake-hit city of L'Aquila. The Perdonanza is an annual festival and procession to celebrate the plenary indulgence granted in perpetuity by Pope Celestine V to all those who enter the Basilica of Santa Maria di Collemaggio on 28 or 29 August each year. Celestine had a particular attachment to L'Aquila and Abruzzo, the wild and rugged region that surrounds it, having spent much of his life there as a hermit. Berlusconi is expected in L'Aquila on Friday for a progress report on the government's efforts to rebuild the city and the surrounding district following April's disaster. A plenary indulgence is the doctrinal reverse of a life sentence. Every sin you ever committed is wiped out at a stroke, and so long as you don't err again you go streaking up to the pearly gates and straight into heaven without having to spend even the odd, mildly vexing hour in purgatory. It is just the sort of arrangement that could be expected to appeal to a man-in-a-hurry such as Berlusconi. And the papal bull with which Celestine made his unrepeatable offer of eternal bliss does not except mysterious entanglements with teenagers or nights spent with escorts. But there are doubts as to whether Italy's eternally controversial prime minister will be willing – or able – to take advantage of the opportunity. Just by joining the procession he would be announcing to the world that he regards himself as a sinner badly in need of a break. And Berlusconi, even more than the rest of us, has difficulty in admitting he is in the wrong. When his wife announced she was divorcing him because of his alleged frequenting of "minors", he declared that it was she who should ask for his forgiveness, and not the other way round.

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http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/belief/2009/aug/26/silvio-burlusconi-indulgence-perdonanza