Single mothers aren’t very good, says Buttiglione
Rocco Buttiglione, Italy’s European Affairs Minister, a Catholic and friend of Pope John Paul II, has been nominated to be the European Union commissioner overseeing civil liberties and justice matters.
A European Parliament committee has concluded Mr Buttiglione is unfit for the job, and the parliament as a whole is to vote later this month on whether to confirm all nominees to the new EU Commission.
“Buttiglione against single mamas,” read a front-page headline in Corriere della Sera, a Milan daily.
But the minister insisted his remarks at a conference were taken out of context by Italian journalists.
At the conference, Mr Buttiglione was quoted by reporters as saying: “Children who have only a mother and no father are the children of a not very good mother.”
Mr Buttiglione said he was attempting to liken a professor’s phrase about US-European relations to relations in a family where the children have a mother and a father.
“I was talking about relations between the United States and Europe, certainly not about single mothers, to whom I give all my support,” Mr Buttiglione was quoted as saying.
He is sticking to his views on homosexuality despite the flap over his nomination to the EU job and said he would renounce the post if it came to that rather than alter his Catholic beliefs.
“I feel at peace with my conscience,” Mr Buttiglione said.
Stefania Prestigiacomo, who holds the equal opportunity portfolio in Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government, told Corriere della Sera such an assertion about single mothers “has no place in heaven or on earth”.
But she raised the possibility that Mr Buttiglione’s statement had been misinterpreted.
Earlier this month, Mr Buttiglione told the EU parliament’s justice and home affairs committee he considered homosexuality a sin and that marriage was intended “to allow women to have children and to have protection of a male”.
