Church Protest Held after Priest Says Women Provoke Violence from Men by Provocative Behaviour

RTE News
December 30, 2012

http://www.rte.ie/news/special-reports/2012/1230/360762-church-protest-in-italy-over-priests-comments/

Women with placards in the church

Women in Carrara, Italy attended mass wearing miniskirts and low-necked dresses to protest against an Italian priest's comments.

Father Pietro Corsi, priest at Saint Terenzio, a church in Lerici, Northern Italy said that women killings and violence against women are caused by provocative women's behaviour.

Father Corsi hung a notice on the Church's notice board on women dressing which provoked strong reactions and protests among Italian women and also towards the Church.

After a huge protest all over Italy the priest was forced to remove the letter.

The bishop of La Spezia Ernesto Palletti asked the priest to remove that kind of message and to take a period off in order to think over his mistakes.

The bishop said: "that kind of message is unacceptable and is far from the Church common sense."

An anthropologist and activist for women's rights based in Pisa, Alessandra Verdini, launched a protest against Father Corsi on Facebook.

She gathered the support of thousands of women.

Ms Verdini suggested that people go to Sunday mass wearing a miniskirt in Carrara, Tuscany, a city close to the town where the priest lives.

She said: "we decided to launch this protest because we think that this ideology is basically shared by most of the Catholic Church, and of the society,

"(This ideology) is become one of the cause of the violence against women, that in Italy is actually an emergency". She said

Women rights associations denounced the statement.

Figures suggest that in Italy in 2012 more than 100 women were killed by their husbands or partners, which is the highest rate in decades.

According to the Social Research Institute figures between 2000 and 2011; 2,061 women between 25 and 54 were brutally killed.