We begin auspiciously on Sunday, March 19, the Catholic feast of San Giuseppe or Saint Joseph. Today is Pope Joseph Ratzinger's "onomastico" or saint's day, a kind of second birthday provided by the liturgical calendar.

If you're lucky enough to be called Anthony, as some of us are, you get two--one on June 13, for the Spanish-born Franciscan, Saint Anthony of Padua (he died there), and one on January 17, for the fourth-century Egyptian founder of monasticism.

March 19 is also the Catholic Church's equivalent of Labor Day (Josph was a carpenter), celebrated by a solemn mass in their favor in Saint Peter's in Rome.

And finally it is the day Italy celebrates Fathers' Day (Saint Joseph acted as a father to the child Jesus). Il giorno del papa' (with an accent on the last syllable). And this year once again divorced and separated Italian dads were out demonstrating against the courts that almost invariably give custody of the children to the proverbial Italian mamma (accent on the first syllable).

And rightly so, in the eyes of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who last week, in a television debate with election rival Romano Prodi, when asked why there were so few women in the Italian parliament, suggested that the ladies (le signore) were too busy at home taking care of their homes and their families to show up five days a week in Rome.