ROME - Italian Catholic daily Avvenire on Tuesday reprimanded billionaire leader Silvio Berlusconi after his well-known penchant for glamourous young women triggered the start of divorce proceedings.

In an editorial, the Roman Catholic newspaper said the 72-year-old had a "self-declared weakness for actresses in the bloom of youth" and called on the three-times prime minister to mend his ways.

Its leader-writers wrote that they would not give up hope of discovering a more edifying leader "who knows, with sobriety, how to hold up a mirror -- the least distorting possible -- to the country's soul".

They added that "politics and show business had shown themselves in their worst light" as the melodrama played out across the media.

Berlusconi and his estranged wife Veronica Lario, herself a former actress 20 years his junior, have chosen the lawyers who will represent them in divorce proceedings, news reports said Tuesday.

Speculation over whether Lario will seek damages from Berlusconi, whose family's fortune is estimated at 6.5 billion euros (8.7 billion dollars), filled the pages of Italy's press on Tuesday.

Berlusconi reportedly fell for Lario when she bared her breasts during a performance of a play, "The Magnificent Cuckold," in Milan in 1980.