A political row has erupted in Italy over whether state television should air a BBC documentary about the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.

The dispute broke out after a conservative politician said the Italian broadcaster, RAI, should block the documentary because it was part of what he called 'a media execution squad ready to open fire on the Church and the Pope'.

The head of the parliament's oversight committee for the broadcaster, asked the Director General of RAI Claudio Cappon to deny permission to air 'Sex Crimes and the Vatican'.

It was scheduled to be aired as part of a talk show 'Year Zero' hosted by a progressive journalist, Michele Santoro.

The documentary was aired on the BBC in October but never in Italy, although bloggers have translated the programme and it now ranks as one of Italy's most popular downloaded videos.



Several leftist politicians have attacked the request for censorship.

Italy's powerful Roman Catholic Church has condemned the documentary.

At the weekend, a newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, accused bloggers who put the documentary on the web of spreading 'infamous slander'.

The documentary examined what it described as secret Vatican documents setting out procedures to deal with general abuse of the confessional by a priest to silence his victim.

The original document, written in 1962, was updated in 2001 to deal more specifically with paedophilia as the church around the world became embroiled in a string of sexual abuse scandals.