The Press: Insult to the Pope?

Rome's Communist weekly New Ways five years ago ran a cartoon showing the Pope atop a tank, a dollar sign dangling from his neck. He was blessing such heavily armed "warmongers" as Churchill, Dulles and Harriman (see cut). When the Italian government spotted the cartoon it began a criminal action against the editor, since under Italian law insults to the Pope are punishable by the government. But it could not get its case into court. Reason: the New Ways' editor is Luigi Longo, hard-bitten leader of Italy's Communist partisans during the war, and now No. 2 man in the country's Communist Party; as a member of the Chamber of Deputies, he claimed parliamentary immunity. For five years the Chamber muffled every move to bring Longo to trial. Last week the anti-Communists finally won. They pushed through a resolution stripping him of immunity. As soon as a date is set, Longo will be haled into criminal court for trial.