Pressure from senior Roman Catholic clerics has provoked an institutional crisis in Italy over the highly emotional case of a father seeking the right of his daughter to die having lain in a coma for more than 16 years.

Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right government reversed course on Friday to pass a decree forbidding doctors from withholding food from Eluana Englaro in spite of a final victory in the courts by her father. Doctors say she is in a vegetative state following an accident in 1992.