ROME (Reuters) — A political row has erupted in Italy over whether state television should air a BBC documentary about the sexual abuse of children by Roman Catholic priests.The dispute broke out after a conservative politician said RAI should block the documentary because it was part of what he called “a media execution squad ready to open fire on the Church and the Pope”.

Mario Landolfi, head of the parliament’s oversight committee for the broadcaster, asked RAI director general Claudio Cappon to deny permission to air “Sex Crimes and the Vatican”.

Michele Santoro, a progressive and left-leaning journalist, wants to air it as the centrepiece of his talk show “Year Zero”.

The documentary was aired on the BBC in October but never in Italy, although bloggers have translated it and it now ranks as Google Video Italia’s (www.video.google.it) most popular item.

Several leftist politicians immediately attacked Landolfi’s request for censorship.

“Neither the oversight committee or individual politicians have the right to ask for a preventive censorship of any journalists or topic,” said Giuseppe Giulietti, a parliamentarian who was once a journalists’ union leader at RAI.

Italy’s powerful Roman Catholic Church already has condemned the documentary.

At the weekend, Avvenire, the newspaper of the Italian Bishops Conference, accused bloggers who put the documentary on the web of spreading “infamous slander”.

Two leftists parliamentarians, Giovanni Russo Spena and Gennaro Migliore, said in a joint statement that the documentary should be aired because “paedophilia in the Catholic Church is well known, there is no mystery about it”.