VATICAN CITY: The Vatican has reacted with outrage to criticism of Pope Benedict XVI's stance on euthanasia during a traditional May Day rock concert in Rome that was carried live on Italian television.
"Attacking the Church is terrorism. Fueling blind and irrational fury against he who always speaks in the name of love is terrorism," the Vatican mouthpiece L'Osservatore Romano says in its edition to appear on Thursday.
"It is vile and terrorist to throw stones at the pope, this time directly, while feeling protected by shouts of approval from an easily excitable crowd," the daily says.
The remarks come after singer Andrea Rivera spoke out strongly against a decision by the Italian Catholic Church to deny a religious funeral to Piergiorgio Welby, a muscular dystrophy sufferer who ended his life in December by having a doctor remove him from his artificial respirator.
Rivera told a throng of some 400,000 people at Tuesday's concert: "The pope said that he doesn't believe in the theory of evolution. I agree, the Church has not evolved.
"I cannot accept that the Vatican refused a funeral for Welby. That wasn't the case for (the dictators) Franco and Pinochet," he said.
Osservatore Romano writes: "The statements ... are of a worrying superficiality, but their gravity is not superficial."
The paper points to death threats that have been received by the head of the Italian Catholic Church, Monsignor Angelo Bagnasco.
Harshly criticised for his stance against legal recognition for gay couples, Bagnasco is under police protection after receiving several death threats.
Most recently, on Friday, he received an envelope containing a bullet and a picture of the prelate with a swastika over it.
