Genoa, Italy - Controversial Catholic priest Gianni Baget Bozzo, a confidant of Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, has died, Italian news reports said Friday. He was 84.

Baget Bozzo died in his sleep at his home in the northwestern city of Genoa, the ANSA news agency said.

His "constant support proved decisive" for the creation of Berlusconi's conservative People of Freedom party, senior party official Maurizio Gasparri said, paying tribute to the cleric.

Apart from his association with Berlusconi and, before that, his friendship with disgraced former prime minister Bettino Craxi, Baget Bozzo was well known in Italy for television talk show appearances and his newspaper articles.

In recent years, he often criticised what he said was the political left's "soft" stance on radical Islam. He also argued for a Europe needing to remain faithful to its "Christian roots," a concept dear to Pope Benedict XVI.

Born in Savona, Baget Bozzo obtained a law degree and was elected in 1959 as a Christian Democrat town councillor in the nearby city of Genoa, before abandoning the position to study theology.

He was ordained a priest in 1967, but returned to politics in the 1980s as a supporter of Craxi's Socialist Party for which he was elected to the European Parliament in 1984.

Suspended by the Vatican for holding political office without obtaining permission from the Church, he was eventually reinstated in 1994.

By then, Italy's traditional ruling parties, the Christian Democrats and Craxi's Socialist party, had been swept away by the so- called "Tangentopoli" (Bribesville) anti-corruption probe.

Finding a new political home in Berlusconi's then Forza Italia party, Baget-Bozzo helped draft its "charter of values".

"The left has a monopoly over culture in Italy, but the premier (Berlusconi) has in his hand the poor people against the fat (rich)," Baget Bozzo said in a recent interview explaining the billionaire media mogul-turned-politician's electoral success. (dpa)