Sanremo music festival is an Italian institution and also a big money spinner for the publicity and sponsorship deals it generates.

To maintain this income it needs to attract a high share of viewers. Anything less than 40% of the total audience is regarded as a failure.

Enter singer, songwriter and self-appointed spokesman for the oppressed, Adriano Celentano. Now aged 73, he is another Italian institution who has cultivated an image of a poet/guru who casts a worldly-wise eye on the state of the planet and humankind. Recently his TV appearances have become rarer and are always orchestrated and hyped.

This year he was paid an arm and a leg by Rai TV to make a special guest appearance on the first night at Sanremo.  The content of this slot was shrouded in secrecy to raise expectations that he would deliver something memorable.

Almost 50% of viewers tuned in which means that he achieved what Rai wanted. The controversy he caused was entirely predictable and the managers of the TV network are feigning shock and embarrassment at his comments directed at the Catholic church.

During the course of a rambling 50 minute section of music and monologues, Celentano expressed the opinion that Avvenire, the daily newspaper of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, and Catholic weekly Famiglia Cristiana were useless, hypocritical journals which  should be shut down because they talk only of politics and not of religious ideas. Not surprisingly the Vatican are not amused.

Despite appearances to the contrary, Celentano is no fool. He was deliberately provocative to get a reaction but he chose fairly soft targets rather than strike at bigger issues like the Catholic  church’s policies on issues like family planning, AIDs and pedophile priests. It is revealing, and mildly amusing,  that his mild criticism should have such a big effect but this whole affair amounts to nothing more than cynically planned storm in a teacup.