The Vatican and Sanremo’s bishop protested the act, lamenting in particular that it was broadcast on national television.

In true Achille Lauro style, the tattooed, bare-chested and barefoot artist gyrated and grabbed his crotch as he performed Domenica (Sunday), backed up by singers from the Harlem Gospel Choir.

He finished by kneeling on stage, hands clasped in front of him as if in prayer, and poured water from a bowl over his forehead.

Sanremo Bishop Antonio Suetta said the performance contained “words, attitudes and gestures that are not just offensive to religion, but to human dignity”.

In a statement, Suetta said he considered not saying anything, knowing that his protest would only draw attention to the performance.

But he said he also felt he couldn’t stay silent because Italian state broadcaster RAI had allowed images that “mocked and profaned the sacred signs of the Catholic faith by evoking the gesture of Baptism in a dull and desecrating context”.

“I believed it necessary to once again denounce how the public service cannot and must not allow such situations, hoping again that someone intervenes at an institutional level,” he wrote.

Lauro said in comments on his Instagram feed, which has 1.7 million followers, that he wanted to dedicate his opening night performance to his mother as a birthday present.

“Mothers are divine beings; they give us life everyday,” he wrote in a post that had over 2000 comments.

“Today in a new beginning, I give you my baptism.”

RAI said it regretted that church authorities had viewed the gesture “as an affront to the sacrament of baptism”.

Some 10,911,000 viewers around the country tuned in to watch the opening night of the annual music festival, which decides Italy’s representatives for the following Eurovision Song Contest.

Highlights of the opening night included the guest return of last year’s victors, Måneskin, the Roman glam rockers who went on win Eurovision, and a candid appearance by tennis star Matteo Berrettini, who last week became the first Italian man to make the semi-finals of the Australian Open.