TIMES ONLINE: Silvio Berlusconi faced mounting pressure to come clean about his private life yesterday after revelations that he entertained about 20 women, including two lesbian escort girls, until dawn during a private party at his house in Rome.
Patrizia D’Addario, the Bari prostitute who claims to have recorded footage that proves her encounters with the Prime Minister, gave more details of her first meeting with Mr Berlusconi, saying: “It felt like a harem. And there was only one sheikh. Him.”
She also spoke of the “strange burglary” in which her underwear, computer and the dress she wore to the party were allegedly stolen from her home days after she told a friend of the secret recordings.
It is understood that the video recordings, taken on her mobile phone, show Ms D’Addario in the Prime Minister’s bedroom. She claims that the four-poster bed with white drapes and duvets were given to him as a present by his friend Vladimir Putin, the Russian Prime Minister. A Kremlin spokesman denied that Mr Putin had ever given the Italian leader a bed. >>> Lucy Bannerman in Bari | Friday, June 26, 2009
TIMES ONLINE: Senior Roman Catholic Bishop Calls for Silvio Berlusconi to Resign
A Roman Catholic bishop called for the resignation of Silvio Berlusconi, the first time that such a senior figure of the Church has done so, adding to a growing sense that the crisis over the beleaguered Italian Prime Minister’s private life is out of control.
Monsignor Domenico Mogavero, Bishop of Mazara del Vallo in Sicily and a former senior official in the Italian Bishops' Conference, said that Mr Berlusconi should “consider whether it is opportune to resign in the interests of the country”.
The Prime Minister was further criticised by the Church when Archbishop Angelo Bagnasco of Genoa, head of the Conference, warned against “men drunk on a delirium of their own greatness, who touch the illusion of omnipotence and distort moral values”. >>> Richard Owen in Rome | Friday, June 26, 2009
