ROME, Jan 25: The demise of Italy’s centre-left leader Romano Prodi is the latest episode in a saga of woes afflicting the country including a Naples rubbish crisis, tensions with the Vatican and corruption scandals.

Italian society and the political class are looking more and more “like a separated couple living in the same house,” said Gian Maria Fara, the head of the Eurispes think tank here.

While President Giorgio Napolitano kicked off crisis talks in the wake of Prodi’s resignation late Thursday, Fara was presenting the association’s annual report on the state of public opinion in Italy.

Napolitano himself enjoys a favourable rating of 58.5 per cent, but most of Italy’s institutions scored failing marks on this year’s Eurispes report card.

If the government’s 25 per cent score sounds dismal, parliament fared even worse with 19 per cent while political parties were roundly scorned with an average approval rating of just 14 per cent.

The Roman Catholic Church meanwhile slid 10 percentage points in a year, dipping into negative territory for the first time with 49.7 per cent.

Fara blamed the drop on “interventions seen as excessive on topics that public opinion interprets from a different point of view.” Over the past year, the Vatican and the Catholic hierarchy have repeatedly weighed in as Italy debated granting legal recognition to gay couples as well as issues such as abortion and euthanasia.

Then, early this month, Pope Benedict XVI raised eyebrows by criticising the state of Rome’s poor suburbs during traditional new year’s greetings at city hall here, usually an uncontroversial event.—AFP