The Vatican is criticizing New Year’s Eve festivities in Italy that went seriously awry when the state-owned television network inadvertently announced the New Year one minute early, aired blasphemies and swear words, and mistakenly revealed the death of a major Star Wars character.

The Independent is reporting on the disastrous event which was broadcast live by RAI, the state-owned 24-hour news network, and watched by an estimated nine million people on New Year’s Eve.

Part of the broadcast included messages of good will sent in by viewers which were shown in a news ticker across the bottom of the screen. While most were joyful and heartfelt, some were less than appropriate.

For instance, one missive contained the phrase, “porco Dio” which means “God (is a) pig” in Italian, which is considered to be one of the gravest of insults in Italy.

The Italian equivalent of the F-word also appeared in another message, as did one which revealed the death of a major character in the new Star Wars film.

Added to these issues was a problem with the countdown clock which caused broadcasters to announce the New Year at 11:59 p.m. instead of at midnight.

The Vatican’s L’Osservatore Romano daily newspaper called the broadcast “out of control.”

“A mistaken countdown, the end of Star Wars revealed, swear words and even blasphemy,” the paper opined. “All live on air – it was not a good New Year’s Eve for RAI.”

It went on to say that the insult to God shows that “in the eyes of many, blasphemy is no longer considered noteworthy and is almost acceptable.”

Television is trying too hard to develop a social media dimension, the paper continued, and now “risks spinning out of control.”

Network managers were quick to issue apologies for broadcasting the “gravely offensive message” and said they were launching an internal inquiry to look into the episode. At present, they believe that the blasphemous missive and swear words managed to get on the air due to human error and a failure in the electronic filtering system.

The staff member responsible for checking the text messages has been suspended.

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