ROME – Amid a spiraling Italian debate over immigration, two personalities increasingly are coming to symbolize the opposing positions. In one corner is Pope Francis, while in the other stands ex-General Roberto Vannacci, increasingly perhaps the country’s single most polarizing political figure.
Today a member of the European Parliament for Italy’s anti-immigrant Lega party, Vannacci took to his Facebook account on Thursday to reply to Pope Francis, who had used his General Audience the day before to describe rejecting migrants as a “grave sin.”
Vannacci’s response didn’t mix words.
“With all due respect, the Vatican has always defended its borders very well,” Vannacci wrote. “Why can’t Italy do the same?”
“The only way to reduce the deaths of migrants is to prevent them from leaving, reinforcing the concept that the right to stay in one’s own country prevails over everything,” he wrote.
The immediate media spin was both swift and inevitable: “Polemics mount between the General and the Pope” was a common headline.
To be clear, Vannacci is not the only politician in Italy who’s objected to recent statements from church leaders, including not just the pope but also senior figures in the Italian bishops’ conference, on migration.
Yet because of who he is, Vannacci’s voice may arouse a greater-than-normal share of interest.
The 55-year-old former paratrooper and veteran of operations in both Afghanistan and Iraq exploded onto the Italian stage in 2023 when he published his controversial book Il Mondo al Contrario, which translates as “The World Upside Down.”
Among other things, Vannacci referred to homosexuality as “not normal” and told gays bluntly to “get over it.” He referred to Paola Egonu, a volleyball star of Nigerian descent who recently led Italy to the gold medal in the Paris Olympics, saying that while she might have Italian citizenship, her “somatic features … do not represent Italian-ness.”
Vannacci also expressed skepticism about climate change and opposition to the occupation of unused or run-down structures by homeless persons, which is a common practice in some Italian cities, and which has been defended by Pope Francis’s right-hand man on charitable matters, Polish Cardinal Konrad Krajewski.
The book shot to the top of bestseller lists in Italy, producing an avalanche of reaction. Defense Minister Guido Crosetto removed Vannacci from his military post, saying the book had brought “discredit [to] the Army, the Defense [Ministry] and the Constitution,” while an army investigation later concluded that Vannacci had done “injury to the principle of neutrality/third party of the Armed Forces.”
In response, Vannacci decided to go into politics and quickly found a sponsor in Matteo Salvini, leader of the far-right Lega party. Vannacci became a candidate in elections for the European parliament in early June and won in a landslide with more than 500,000 votes, the second highest total in the country after Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Lately, however, it has begun to seem that the alliance between Vannacci and Salvini may be fraying, especially because beyond Vannacci himself, the Lega’s performance in the European elections and in subsequent polls has been less than stellar. Ten days ago, the Italian polling firm Termometro Politico found that almost ten percent of Italians would be prepared to support a new party led by Vannacci, which would actually outperform the Lega according to most recent surveys.
A Vannacci ally has already coined a name for a new party, “Sovereign Europe,” and laid out a sort of program, which includes leaving NATO, rejecting American hegemony and turning Europe into a confederation with its own army, forging closer ties with Russia, and, of course, cracking down on illegal immigration.
The platform sketched by Fabio Filomeni, a lieutenant colonel in the army and close Vannacci advisor, also includes “disincentivizing the practice of abortion as a means of birth control.”
While parts of that agenda might be congenial to Pope Francis and his Vatican team, including the idea of putting some daylight between Europe and the United States on foreign policy, obviously the positions on immigration and the environment would create clear conflicts.
In that context, Vannacci’s Aug. 29 riposte marks the first time the former general has come out publicly against the pope – suggesting, perhaps, that he feels doing so isn’t necessarily bad politics on the Italian right.
This is not, however, the first time Vannacci has crossed swords with church leaders in public. In April, Vannacci criticized public education in Italy for allegedly a fetish out of equality, when in fact, he argued, students with differing abilities should be treated differently. As part of that picture, he proposed that students with disabilities should have separate classes.
In response, the vice president of the Italian bishops’ conference, Bishop Francesco Savino of Cassano all’Jonio, warned that Vannacci’s comments “take us back to the darkest periods of our history,” in what most Italians interpreted as a reference to the racial laws adopted during Italy’s fascist period.
