If you make a former topless model into a government minister, you can expect the world's tabloids gleefully to dig up photos of her wearing next to nothing - or, indeed, nothing.

Since she was sworn in as Minister for Equal Opportunities in the new centre-right Government of Silvio Berlusconi two weeks ago, Mara Carfagna, 32, a former Miss Italy contestant and television showgirl, has shrugged off the near-nude pics of her looking sultry and seductive, pointedly arriving at the office looking thoroughly businesslike in her chic ministerial trouser suit.

The real problems, though, were always going to arise when Carfagna had to deal with tricky policy issues rather than with nudges and winks about her past. This week she ran straight into the vexed issue of gay rights in a country which - partly because of its Roman Catholicism - still does not sanction civil partnerships, let alone “gay marriages”. She managed to arouse the fury of Italian gay and lesbian rights groups by refusing to back gay pride parades this summer on the ground that “gays no longer suffer discrimination in Italy”.

Rubbish, said the Italian gay rights group Arcigay: in Catholic Italy, homosexuals still “are forced to hide their sexual orientation at home, at school and at work”. Aurelio Mancuso, its spokesman, said that Carfagna was living in “a fairytale land”.

A devout Catholic - her full name is Maria Rosaria Carfagna - from Salerno in southern Italy, where both her parents were teachers, she proudly describes her family as “traditional and conservative”.

She regrets not having gone into politics earlier, but after university showbiz beckoned instead - she studied dance and piano, and her looks took her into the 1997 Miss Italy contest (she came sixth).

Before long she was posing for men's magazines. She was talent-spotted by producers for Berlusconi's Mediaset network, working as a TV variety show presenter for six years - and coming to the attention of the media tycoon boss. He detected her interest in politics, or so the story goes, and recruited her into the Forza Italia party to help to give the party a more youthful and glamorous image.

So how close is she to the Prime Minister? When she entered Parliament in 2006 he told her: “We have a rule inside Forza Italia, the rule of ius primae noctis” - the Latin term for the right of a feudal lord to sleep with a new bride from his estate on the first night of her marriage. But Carfagna, who has a steady boyfriend called Marco, insists that the first time she was invited to Berlusconi's palazzo in Rome she was chaperoned by her father, and says she hopes to marry and have a family. Yet she concedes: “If anyone wants to linger over my physique - well, let them have their fun.”

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