Italian Politician 'Cursed' After Orangutan Remark

Roberto Calderoli, an Italian Senator, apparently said something last year that has gotten him into a whole lot of trouble. It seems the Senator mentioned that the new Italian Integration Minister, Cecile Kyenge, who is Italy's first black minister by the way, reminded him of an orangutan.

I assume that Ms.Kyenge didn't appreciate being compared to a species of the great ape family and she apparently mentioned this to her daddy, Clement Kikoko Kyenge, who is a minister of the religious kind residing in the African Congo.

At his next prayer meeting, Preacher Kyenge said a prayer in which God was asked to free Mr. Calderoli from his evil thoughts. A photo of Mr. Calderoli was then placed before an altar dedicated to the ancestors of the village, and the same request made.

All of a sudden, Senator Calderoli appears to have begun having all sorts of strange things happen to him. According to the Senator, over the past year he's incurred a series of misfortunes including six hospital operations, the death of his mother, two broken fingers and two broken vertebrae, all of which he says prove that he's been cursed by Mr. Kyenge.

To cap his year of bad luck, Mr Calderoli this month tweeted a photo of himself holding a six foot long snake he said he had found and killed at his home in Italy. He apologized to Ms. Kyenge, but that didn't seem to help very much.

Mr. Calderoli also told Oggi magazine that friends from Naples had given him a lucky charm in the shape of a red chili pepper – believed to ward off evil spirits – only for it to mysteriously snap in half a day later. A mystic, he added, "saw a tremendous force active around me."

Mr. Kyenge denies any curse had been placed on Mr. Calderoli. "We are Christians like him, we have forgiven him and our prayer was only meant to encourage him to make statements befitting his role," he said.

Mr. Kyenge said that if Mr. Calderoli had been sincere in the apology he made to his daughter after the orangutan remark, the case was closed. If, however, Mr. Calderoli had not been contrite, "the ancestors may become nervous," he said.

Ms. Kyenge, who has lived in Italy since 1983, is an Italian citizen and now a European MP, dismissed all talk of curses. "I ask myself what religion Mr. Calderoli practises," she said. "I am Catholic and therefore do not believe in many other practises and rites and I don't agree with his statements, which I consider irreligious."

Senator Calderoli is now facing prosecution for his remarks. Perhaps he owes Ms. Kyenge a more sincere apology?