Italian media reported that parish priest Piero Corsi fixed an article to the bulletin board of his church in the northern village of San Terenzo di Lerici, which said women should engage in ‘healthy self criticism’ over the issue of femicide, or men murdering women.

Domestic violence against women is a serious problem in Italy, although a report by a United Nations mission in June said it was ‘largely invisible and underreported,’ the Telegraph reports.

The article, posted on a website by a conservative Catholic named Bruno Volpe, attacked pornography and erotic television advertising.

It said that women shared the blame for ‘provoking the worst instincts, which then turn into violence and sexual abuse’.

According to the report, the mayor of Lerici, Marco Caluri, said that the article was ‘astonishing and deeply offensive’.

The bishop of La Spezia ordered it to be taken down, saying it contained ‘unacceptable opinions which are against the common position of the church’.

A UN report citing data from Italian statistics agency ISTAT said that a third of women in Italy have reported being victim of serious domestic violence.

It said that as many as 127 women had been murdered by men in 2010, often as a result of ‘honour, men''s unemployment and jealousy by the perpetrator’, the report added. (ANI)