An Italian Facebook group offering a 'Catholic' guide to the abortion of the 'homosexual' fetus has been shut down after a week of controversy.

‘Aborting a gay is an act of faith’ was the name of the group set up a week ago, which claimed to be in contact with doctors and scientists ‘able to eradicate this disease from the world’.

LGBT people were described as ‘ill’, ‘an offence to God’, ‘a problem’ and ‘a virus’, in direct opposition to modern scientific opinion and all leading global medical bodies.

LGBT Italian groups reacted immediately. Aurelio Mancuso, president of LGBT association Equality, said: ‘We have received a lot of critics to this page and we have signalled it to Facebook.

‘This is not only an homophobic page. There’s also misogyny and there’s an incitement to abortion. Abortion in Italy is legal, but its encouragement is illegal.’

Nobody knows who has created this group. In its first week, it received more than 2,000 comments. Most of them were against this page, but there were also words of support.

Italian LGBT associations are considering whether to sue the anonymous creator.

Fabrizio Marrazzo, sposkesman of the Gay Center, said: ‘This is the last proof that we need a law against homophobia, as soon as possible.

‘The law mancino, which guarantees protection against discrimination for race and religion, must be extended to homophobia and gay hate.’