Warner Bros.

THE Vatican lauded the latest Harry Potter film on Monday, saying Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince made the age-old debate over good versus evil crystal clear.

The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano even gave two thumbs up to the film's treatment of adolescent love, saying it achieved the "correct balance" and made the stars more credible to the general audience.

The newspaper said the film was the best adaptation yet of the JK Rowling series about the adventures of the bespectacled child wizard Harry Potter and his Hogwarts chums as they battle Harry's nemesis, the evil sorcerer Voldemort.

While criticising Rowling for omitting any explicit "reference to the transcendent" in her books, L'Osservatore said the latest instalment nevertheless makes clear that good should overcome evil "and that sometimes this requires costs and sacrifice".

"In addition, the spastic search for immortality epitomised by Voldemort is stigmatised," the review said.

The Vatican's praise follows the sharp criticism of the Harry Potter series by a conservative Austrian priest at the centre of a church crisis earlier this year.

The Reverend Gerhard Maria Wagner had characterised Harry Potter novels as Satanism, while also suggesting Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans and surrounding areas, was provoked by sin.

Pope Benedict XVI promoted Wager to the post of auxiliary bishop in Linz, Austria's third largest city, in January. But amid an outcry among Austrian Catholics over his comments, Wagner eventually gave up the promotion.

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