A Provision Buried in Futuro Nazionale's Platform Could Turn "Mortacci Tua" Into a €300 FineBuried on page 83 of Futuro Nazionale's newly published political platform, in a chapter pointedly titled "Non-Negotiable Values," is a proposal that's suddenly turned into one of Italy's more unusual political controversies: a call to strictly enforce Article 724 of Italy's penal code, the provision that fines people for publicly blaspheming or for making outrageous public gestures toward the dead.The party, founded and led by former Army general and MEP Roberto Vannacci, argues that failing to enforce this rule, whether out of habit or what the platform calls ideological permissiveness, represents both a moral failing and lost revenue for the state, revenue the party suggests could instead fund social welfare programs and development initiatives. The proposal calls for police to actively verify violations and report them to judicial authorities, rather than letting the law sit unenforced as it largely has in practice for decades. What the Law Actually Says Article 724 dates back to Italy's original penal code and has survived, in modified form, into the present day. It states that anyone who publicly blasphemes, using invective or outrageous language, against the Divinity or venerated religious symbols and figures faces an administrative fine between €51 and €309. Crucially, the same fine applies to anyone engaging in any public display considered outrageous toward the deceased. One important legal nuance: blasphemy itself stopped being a criminal offense in Italy back in 1999, when Legislative Decree 507 reclassified it as a civil administrative violation rather than a crime. In practice, that means public blasphemy or insults toward the dead are punished today the way a parking violation might be, with a fine rather than a criminal record, but the fine itself remains legally enforceable whenever police choose to apply it. Why Rome, Specifically, Is Bracing for This The reason this proposal has generated so much attention, and no small amount of mockery, comes down to language, specifically Roman dialect. Critics quickly zeroed in on the likely collateral damage: "mortacci tua," one of the most commonly used expressions in Roman speech, a phrase that literally invokes a person's dead ancestors and is used constantly across the city, in anger, in humor, in nearly every register of daily conversation, from friendly ribbing to genuine insult. Legal commentators covering the story have been careful to note an important caveat: simply saying the phrase doesn't automatically trigger a fine. For the sanction to actually apply, the specific legal elements of the statute have to be met, and whether a given utterance counts as a genuinely "outrageous public manifestation" toward the dead depends on the circumstances and how the behavior is legally interpreted, not on the mere use of the words themselves. Still, the political message from Futuro Nazionale is explicit: the party wants law enforcement to apply this provision with noticeably more rigor than it currently does, a phrase that, if taken at face value in a city where "mortacci tua" functions almost as verbal punctuation, opens up genuinely strange enforcement territory. Not Vannacci's First Brush With This Topic This isn't a stray idea appearing once and disappearing. The proposal surfaced publicly in late August, when Futuro Nazionale published the second installment of its political program online, and it resurfaced again after a widely covered incident in Venice, where a public blasphemy complaint drew fresh attention to how the law gets applied in practice today. Multiple Italian outlets, including Adnkronos, Open and regional papers across the country, picked up the story once journalists spotted the passage buried deep in the party's platform document, treating it as a small but telling window into the broader cultural and moral positioning Vannacci is building his party's electoral identity around. A Debate That's Part Serious, Part Punchline The reaction has split cleanly along two tracks. On one side, commentators have treated the proposal as a legitimate, if unusual, policy signal: a concrete illustration of how far a "law and order," traditional-values platform is willing to reach into everyday speech and cultural habits. On the other, plenty of Italian commentary has leaned into the sheer impracticality of the idea, joking that strict enforcement could realistically bankrupt a meaningful share of Rome's population, given how deeply "mortacci tua" is woven into the city's everyday vocabulary, used by grandmothers, taxi drivers and football fans alike, rarely with any genuine intent to offend the deceased. What Happens Next For now, the proposal remains exactly that: a platform position from a party preparing for upcoming elections, not an active change in enforcement policy or law. Article 724 already exists and already carries these fines; what Futuro Nazionale is proposing is a shift in how consistently and aggressively it gets applied, not a new law altogether. Whether the idea ever moves from a page in a campaign document to an actual enforcement directive is uncertain, but it's already succeeded at one thing regardless: turning a decades-old, largely dormant provision of Italy's penal code into a live talking point, and giving Rome's relationship with its own colorful dialect an unexpected new political dimension.  Ph: Marco Iacobucci Epp / Shutterstock.com