Catholic Church and chief of Fiat unite to condemn Silvio Berlusconi

Prime minister Silvio Berlusconi came under fire from large sections of the Italian establishment this weekend as his government struggled to re-establish its authority after narrowly surviving a confidence vote in parliament last week.

• Questions are growing over Silvio Berlusconi's future Pic: AFP

Mr Berlusconi's centre-right government relied on the support of a rebel group of conservative deputies loyal to his bitter rival Gianfranco Fini to get through Wednesday's vote, and problems are stacking up for the 74-year-old prime minister.

He faces business leaders impatient at the infighting that has overshadowed policy for much of the year, a looming battle with judges over justice reforms and condemnation from the Vatican over his sense of humour.

Months of corruption scandals and political acrimony have combined with a sluggish economy to create a generalised climate of rancour that has held up any serious attempt at reform and undermined respect for the government and politics in general.

"The country has lost its institutional sense, the compass has been lost, someone opened the gates of the zoo and they've all got out," Sergio Marchionne, the chief executive of Italy's industrial champion Fiat said. "It's difficult to go around the world and explain what's happening in Italy. It's shameful."

A poll published in the Corriere della Sera newspaper yesterday showed 56 per cent of people had a negative opinion of politics, with 28 per cent expressing outright "disgust" and a sharp rise in the numbers expressing resigned indifference.

Mr Berlusconi himself has done little to raise the tone, attracting withering criticism from the Vatican after one amateur video showed him making a joke about the Holocaust and another uttering a highly offensive Italian blasphemy.

He had told supporters outside his home: "A Jew hides a fellow Jew in his basement at the time of the concentration camps and charges him €3,000 a day. The Jew paid up because he had the money but do you think he should tell him that Hitler has died and the war is over?"

In another video, filmed ahead of as he met relief workers at a G8 last year summit which Italy hosted in the earthquake-hit city of L'Aquila, he is heard telling a joke at the expense of opposition MP Rosy Bindi.She has been the target of several underhand comments from him and the joke he told again referred to her looks and ended with words "porco Dio" (pig God) a highly offensive blasphemy in Italy.

The videos drew a rare criticism from the Vatican daily L'Osservatore Romano, which called the remarks "deplorable jokes which offend the feelings of believers and the sacred memory of the six million victims of the Shoah."

The exasperation from Fiat and the Catholic Church, two of the pillars of Italian society, comes as speculation grows that the government will fall before it reaches the end of its term in 2013, despite last week's successful confidence vote.

"We'll give it three weeks to see if this majority is really strong enough to sustain the action of the government," said interior minister Roberto Maroni, a member of Mr Berlusconi's Northern League coalition ally which wants an early election.

"If it doesn't, it's better to pull the plug on it straight away."

The fate of Mr Berlusconi's government has been in the balance since July, when after months of friction, he expelled Mr Fini from the ruling PDL party they created together in 2008 and their rivalry has overshadowed all else.