The Vatican has said it regrets a ruling by the European Court of
Human Rights, which upheld the protest of an Italian woman against the
display of a crucifix at a state school attended by her two children.
Soile Lautsi, from Abano Terme, near Padua, had taken the issue to
Strasbourg on the grounds that displaying crucifixes in classrooms
contradicted the separation of Church and state in Italy, said UK’s Times Online.
She was awarded €5,000 in damages, with the court finding that the
school had violated religious and educational freedoms guaranteed under
the European Rights Convention.
It did not order the Italian authorities to remove the cross.
Italian Minister for Education, Mariastella Gelmini, was scathing of
the court’s ruling, saying the crucifix was more a part of the
country’s identity than a religious symbol.
“No one, and certainly not an ideological European court, will
succeed in erasing our identity,” she was quoted as saying in an AFP
report in the Sydney Morning Herald.
The AFP report said Lautsi’s efforts to change the tradition through
Italian courts had been thrown out after years of wrangling. The courts
there had ruled that the crucifix was a symbol of Italy’s history and
culture, and therefore a part of its identity.
Jesuit Fr Federico Lombardi, director of the Vatican press office,
gave a brief statement today to Vatican Radio in response to the
decision, ZENIT reports.
“The crucifix has always been a sign of God’s offer of love, of
union and of welcome for the whole of humanity,” the spokesman said.
“It is to be regretted that it has come to be considered as a sign of
division, of exclusion and of limitation of liberty. It is not this,
and it is not so in the common feeling of our people.”
FULL STORY
Italy challenges ruling that crucifix in class violates religious freedom (Times Online)
Italy’s crucifixes in classrooms ‘violate rights’ (Sydney Morning Herald/AFP)
Vatican “Regrets” European Court Ruling on Crucifix (ZENIT)
PHOTO