Pope Benedict XVI(L) and Ecumenical Orthodox Patriarch Bartholomew celebrate a mass at the Holy Spirit Cathedral in Istanbul, November. Harsh words from the Vatican over plans to grant legal status to gay couples have drawn an angry reaction from Italy's left wing, which bristled over "interference" in the nation's political affairs. [AFP]

Rome - Harsh words from the Vatican over plans to grant legal status to gay couples have drawn an angry reaction from Italy's left wing, which bristled over "interference" in the nation's political affairs.

"It's unacceptable that a measure aimed at ending discrimination should be threatened and condemned," Health Minister Livia Turco told Corriere della Sera after L'Osservatore Romano Sunday, the Vatican mouthpiece, accused the Italian government in an editorial of making a priority of "eradicating the family".

"Too often here in Italy the Church mistakes itself for the state," Mercedes Bresso of the Democrats of the Left told the daily L'Unita.

Prime Minister Romano Prodi's center-left government, which came to power in April, is to draft legislation on civil unions, regardless of sexual orientation, in the Catholic-majority and socially conservative country by January 31.

L'Osservatore Romano's editorial Saturday said: "Eradicating the family is the priority of Italian politics." If the government insists it is defending "individual rights" and that "nothing intends to endanger the traditional family, it will be lying."

Italy's press Saturday carried banner headlines reading "The Vatican on the Attack" and "The Vatican Says Halt".

Although most Italians are at least nominally Roman Catholics, the country is officially secular, and the Vatican is a foreign power that is not supposed to interfere in Italy's internal affairs.

However, the Vatican broadside on civil unions coincided with remarks by Pope Benedict XVI on Saturday urging that religious symbols be allowed in public places.

"Hostility to ... the presence of any religious symbols in public institutions ... is not a sign of healthy secularism, but the degeneration of secularism," he told a group of Italian Catholic jurists.

While acknowledging that "any direct intervention by the Church in this area would be illegitimate interference," the pope defended the Church's right to "affirm and defend great values that give meaning to a person's life and safeguard its dignity."

The Church, which fiercely opposes euthanasia, has also weighed in on the case of a man suffering from muscular dystrophy who wants to be removed from life support.

The Vatican's top official for health issues, Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, deferred to experts studying the question of whether 60-year-old Piergiorgio Welby is receiving "excessive care" justifying an end to his suffering.

"Euthanasia is still equivalent to killing, and the Church cannot accept it," he told the daily La Repubblica, while adding: "The use of disproportionate, absolutely useless, means to treat a terminally ill patient is a useless and cruel practice that only prolongs agony, pain and suffering."

The new legislation on "de facto" couples would grant them inheritance rights, joint medical insurance and visiting rights in prisons and hospitals, among others, but stop short of allowing them to adopt children.

The Italian opposition, led by Forza Italia of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, also blasted the plan, while doubting whether Prodi's motley coalition -- ranging from communists, Greens and radicals to centrist and traditional Catholics -- will be able to unite behind the initiative.

However the bill -- part of Prodi's Union coalition's election manifesto ahead of the April polls -- is expected to be enacted by the Senate, even though the center-left enjoys only a one-seat majority there.