Taking on the Catholic Church in Italy has always been a risky business. Not even the once mighty Communist opposition ever dared attempt a direct confrontation.

But Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is not one to back down when faced with criticism.

On August 28, a newspaper owned by Berlusconi’s brother Paolo launched a stinging attack against the editor of Italy’s main Catholic daily, Avvenire, who has criticised the "Cavaliere", as the prime minister is commonly known, for his allegedly dissolute lifestyle.

Il Giornale accused Avvenire head Dino Boffo of hypocrisy, claiming he had accepted a plea bargain in a court in 2002 after he was accused of pestering a woman to leave her husband, with whom he was in a relationship. Boffo denied the charges.

The attack by Berlusconi’s family paper, which drew a furious response from the Vatican, ruined weeks of patient efforts by the prime minister’s entourage to soothe a Church hierarchy already estranged by talk of the prime minister’s sex life.

The same evening, a high-profile meeting between Berlusconi and Pope Benedict XVI's top aide, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, was abruptly cancelled as the rift between the prime minister and the Church widened into a chasm.

Sandro Gozi, a member of parliament for the opposition Democratic Party, explains why this dispute, unlike previous stories involving Berlusconi’s private life, has been splashed over the front pages of all Italian newspapers.

“So long as the battle pitted Berlusconi against a few leftwing papers, it was easy for the PM to silence the rest of the media,” Gozi told FRANCE 24. “But once the Church found itself under fire, not even Berlusconi could keep things quiet.”

Berlusconi vs everyone else

Meanwhile, Berlusconi’s army of lawyers has opened a second front against a host of Italian and foreign publications guilty of the same scrutiny.

While the Cavaliere had always been careful to avoid unsettling the Vatican, claims of a leftwing conspiracy backed by foreign media had long been a favourite sport for the Italian premier.    
  
So far, his lawyers have launched proceedings against Spanish daily El Pais, French left-leaning magazine Le Nouvel Observateur and Italy’s La Repubblica, a relentless – and often lone – critic of the Cavaliere in a country where the prime minister controls the majority of news outlets as well as most sources of advertising revenue.
  
Berlusconi’s top lawyer Niccolo Ghedini, a member of parliament for the PM's right-wing People of Freedom Party, also said he was investigating “possible libel cases” in Britain.

The British press in particular has played close attention to coverage of Berlusconi’s alleged infidelities and lack thereof in the Italian media. A July 26 editorial in the Observer said that “the real scandal is the way the story has been suppressed”.
     
The trouble began for Berlusconi in May after his wife Veronica Lario decided to divorce him, citing his links with an aspiring model who allegedly called him "Daddy" and whose 18th birthday party he attended in April.

The scandal then escalated after a high-end prostitute said she had spent a night with the prime minister at his Rome residence, a claim Berlusconi has repeatedly denied.