CATHOLICISM’S Big Gun – the sinister fashionista Pope Benedict XVI – is increasingly getting up the noses of Italians.

Instead of the usual display of deference to which he is accustomed, Ratzinger sparked a protest yesterday when he made a brief stop in Genoa, where around 1,000 people marched through the industrial outskirts of the city of Genoa.

They turned out to denounce:

Daily interference by the Vatican in Italian public debate and daily life.

Organised by far-left, feminist and gay rights groups, the rally was called in defence of secularism and in protest at a speech on Monday in which the pope lashed out at abortion, legalised in Italy 30 years ago, as an offence before God.

Said Silvana, an elegant woman in her 70s:

I have been a feminist since 1963, and I still have to march for the same things as 40 years ago.

The day before the protest, Ratzinger – speaking after a California court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage – firmly restated the Roman Catholic Church’s position that only unions between a man and a woman are moral.

The union of love, based on matrimony between a man and a woman, which makes up the family, represents a good for all society that can not be substituted by, confused with, or compared to other types of unions.

The pope also spoke of the inalienable rights of the traditional family

Founded on matrimony between a man and a woman, to be the natural cradle of human life.

The Genoa protest was the second to erupt during a visit in Italy by Pope Benedict. A demonstration by students and faculty at Rome’s La Sapienza university caused him to cancel a visit to the prestigious school in January.

The demonstrators also called for a review of Italian state funding for the Roman Catholic Church, which they evaluated at nine billion euros (14 billion dollars) per year.