The founder and unofficial leader of Italy’s anti-establishment Five-Star movement has had to backtrack over comments he made in an interview with Euronews.<br /><br /> Beppe Grillo suggested the Vatican should pay rent to the city of Rome, whose mayor Virginia Raggi was elected last summer after running as a Five Star candidate.<br /><br /> The comedian mistakenly said the Italian capital owned the Vatican Museums. <br /><br /> “The Vatican Museums, I believe, are owned by the Municipality, the Municipality does not receive anything. We’ll talk with Bergoglio, (referring to the pope) because I think he doesn’t know it,” he told Euronews’ Gardenia Trezzini, during an interview in Brussels for The Global Conversation (in Italian).<br /><br /> In fact the museums are owned by the Vatican, which is independent – and the error prompted Grillo to correct his assertion on Facebook.<br /><br /> “The Vatican Museums are in the Vatican and no-one doubts that,” he said.<br /><br /> The founder of Five-Star, which has become the second most popular party in the country, said he hoped a solution could be found for the Catholic Church to pay taxes for its commercial activities. <br /><br /> Among a torrent of criticism from the political left and right, Grillo has been accused of a “colossal lie” and a “shameful blunder” denoting his movement’s “ignorance” and “inadequacy for office”.<br />
