Pope Urges Italy Catholics to Keep Political Unity : Elections: His letter to bishops is seen as a rallying cry for the disintegrating Christian Democratic Party. Opposition is critical.

Pope John Paul II stuck an oar into the troubled waters of Italian politics Monday in a controversial pre-electoral appeal urging Roman Catholics to reaffirm their political and cultural unity.

A papal letter to Italian bishops was immediately seen as a rallying cry for the decaying Christian Democratic Party, long a Vatican--and American--favorite but now fast disintegrating in a welter of corruption after nearly half a century as the country’s dominant political force.

What the Pope’s spokesman called “an appeal to conscience” came at the start of a week in which Prime Minister Carlo Azeglio Ciampi faces a confidence debate in Parliament and President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro is expected to set a date for unpredictable, landmark elections.

March 27 or April 10 seems the most likely date for the renewal of a Parliament many of whose senators and deputies are among about 3,000 Italian politicians, business leaders and bureaucrats so far implicated in a two-year investigation into a multibillion-dollar nationwide kickback scandal.

Acknowledging the need for “profound political and social renewal,” the Pope nevertheless urged Catholics to “bear witness with courage their faith in God . . . and their love for Italy through a united and coherent presence and an honest and disinterested service in the social and political field.”

Dishonest politicians should be punished, the Pope said, but he warned against confusing the “abuse of power . . . and the normal and healthy functioning of institutions for public good.”

“It is clear that the decisions affecting the future of a well-ordered society should not be put only into the hands of judicial authority alone,” John Paul said. Magistrates in Milan and other major cities are expanding the scandal investigations despite calls for a political solution to an apparently bottomless chronicle of institutionalized corruption.

Splintered by scandal, the Christian Democrats are seeking to rebuild their credibility as the political center in time for the elections, in which the former Communist Party looms as the nation’s strongest political focus.

That is not a pleasing prospect, John Paul made plain, noting the Christian Democrats’ “great merit of having saved liberty and democracy” from communism.

“The presence of lay Christians in social and political life not only was important to oppose various forms of totalitarianism, beginning with communism,” the Pope said. “It is still necessary to express the Christian tradition and culture of Italian society at the social and political level.”

In postwar decades, the Vatican openly supported the Christian Democrats, but Monday’s papal letter had no precedent in John Paul’s 15-year reign, said his spokesman, Joaquin Navarro.

Navarro called the papal remarks “an appeal to responsibility. . . . This message is not political but cultural and ethical. It is his intention to go deeper than tactics or politics.”

The Polish Pope’s partisan sortie into politics became immediate fodder for protest from political groups expecting to oust the Christian Democrats from power for the first time since World War II.

“The Pope is a citizen of another state and should not concern himself with Italian politics,” said Sen. Francesco Speroni, a leader of the separatist Northern League.

Without mentioning them, the Pope scolded both the Northern League, which wants to make Italy a federal republic with three regional governments, and Italian neo-fascists who, along with the former Communists, scored well in municipal elections last month.