Italy: Tonight in Genoa's Sala del Quadrilulum, Archbishop of Genoa Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone will chair a symposium intended to rebut the "absurd and outrageous manipulations" of Dan Brown's international best-seller, The Da Vinci Code.
"That book is all over the place, you find it everywhere. There's a very real risk that many people who read it will take its fabrications for real," the Cardinal told the Italian newspaper, Il Giornale.
He added: "Given my responsibilities as a pastor, I will try to clarify things and to unmask the cheap lies contained in the book. I am trying to put things straight and to help shape people's conscience. I think that, faced with such shameful and unfounded claims, anyone who reads books and who has a minimum of education should protest."
The Da Vinci Code has been an extraordinary success story, with 18 million copies sold in 44 countries over the last two years.
The book follows the adventures of two code-breakers on the trail of the Holy Grail. Among other things, the book claims that the church has for centuries hidden the fundamentally matriarchal nature of Christianity, replacing it with a patriarchal version. Furthermore, the book claims that Jesus did not die but married Mary Magdalene and had a child with her.
Asked about the fact that The Da Vinci Code has sold nearly twice as many copies as the Catholic Church's New Catechism, Cardinal Bertone commented: "It's obvious that we're dealing here with a definitive distribution strategy, one that in some senses is subversive and which is intended to discredit the church with absurd and outrageous manipulations.
"It's as if we were back at the time of 19th-century anti-clerical pamphlets. This whole novel contains a perversion of the Holy Grail tradition which has nothing to do with the lineage of Mary Magdalene. It is both worrying and incredible that so many people believe these lies."
The Da Vinci Code also presents an unflattering portrait of the Catholic lay movement Opus Dei, portrayed as an organisation willing to kill to hide the truth. "This false and violent attack reminds me of those on religious orders in past centuries. I fear they might be the fruit of a precise strategy intended to undermine some of the church's most vibrant forces in this third millennium," said Cardinal Bertone.
Although he is a former No 2 to German Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger at the Vatican's doctrinal department, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Cardinal Bertone is acting on his own initiative and not in response to a Vatican mandate. Vatican spokesman Don Ciro Benedettini yesterday told The Irish Times: "This is something that Cardinal Bertone is doing as a pastor, worried by what he sees as a problem."