The Vatican has offered "for and against" views of JK Rowling's Harry Potter series, which Pope Benedict XVI once said he feared would undermine childrens' sense of good and evil.

Under the headline "The Double Face of Harry Potter" L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said the series was "rich in Christian values" but ultimately offered a "malicious and unreligious" hero as a model for the young.

In a "pro Harry" contribution the Catholic essayist Paolo Gulisano, an authority on JRR Tolkien and GK Chesterton, suggested that "behind the fabulous adventures of the different characters you can see the author's anthropological vision." He said Ms Rowlings had clearly wanted to "help the young reader understand that 'doing good' is the best thing to do".......He carries the reader from the vision of a selfish man towards a vision of a man guided by moral values, the choice of good, sacrifice, friendship, love."

However Edoardo Rialti, professor of literature at Florence University and translator of Tolkien and CS Lewis into Italian, said many had mistakenly tried to draw a "parallel between Ms Rowling's creation and 'the great fantasy masterpieces' of Tolkien and Lewis, "the Christian authors of the most beloved fables of the twentieth century."

Although there were "superficially apparent points in common", Ms Rowling "transmits a vision of the world and human beings full of deep mistakes and dangerous suggestions, even more seductive since it is mixed with half truths and compelling storytelling."

In a letter in March 2003 to the German Catholic sociologist Gabriele Kuby, author of "Harry Potter - Good or Evil", Pope Benedict - then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - said "It is good that you shed light and inform us on the Harry Potter matter, for these are subtle seductions that are barely noticeable and precisely because of that deeply affect children and corrupt the Christian faith in souls even before it could properly grow and mature". He feared young minds would lack "discernment between good and evil and will not have the necessary strength and knowledge to withstand the temptations to evil."

Professor Rialti noted that Tolkien had once written that "fables can depart from the physical world and the universe created, but not from the moral order" and should not present as positive "a reality in which the moral and spiritual structure are inverted or confused, a world in which evil is good. But this is exactly what happens in Harry Potter".

He added that "despite several positive values that can be found in the story" the Harry Potter saga celebrated "witchcraft, the violent manipulation of things and people thanks to the knowledge of the occult to the advantage of a select few". In the books and films "the ends justify the means because the knowledgeable, the chosen ones, the intellectuals, know how to control the dark powers and turn them into good. This is a grave and deep lie, it is the old Gnostic temptation of confusing salvation and truth with a secret knowledge."

By contrast Tolkien and Lewis rejected "magic and power" and promoted "the extraordinary discovery of true Christianity, for which the main character of history is not an exceptional human being, as in the ancient paganism or in today's ideologies, but a person who says yes to God's mysteries."

Last month L'Osservatore Romano attacked "The Golden Compass", the film of Philip Pullman's novel "The Northern Lights" from the "His Dark Materials" trilogy as "the most anti-Christmas film possible" and "devoid of any particular emotion apart from a great coldness."

Mr Pullman's trilogy centres around an orphan girl in a fantasy realm ruled by a sinister body known as the Magisterium, the Catholic term for the Pope's teachings. Although the film version tones this down, L'Osservatore Romano said Mr Pullman advocates "a totally atheist ideology, the enemy of all religions, traditional and institutional, and of Christianity and Catholicism in particular."