The Strasbourg-based court, in a unanimous decision reached on Tuesday, said the presence of crucifixes “could be encouraging for [Christian] religious pupils, but also disturbing for pupils who practised other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities”. A chamber of seven judges (from Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Lithuania, Serbia, Hungary and Turkey) said: “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by public authorities, especially in classrooms, thus restricted the rights of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions and the right of children to believe or not believe.”
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi called the decision “wrong and myopic”. He said it was “grave to try to marginalise from the educational system a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in our history and in Italian culture”. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, said of the Stasbourg court ruling: “This Europe of the third millennium leaves us only with [Halloween] pumpkins and takes away our most precious symbols.” The CEI said the crucifix was not just a religious symbol but also a cultural sign, and part of the historic patrimony of the Italian people.
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The Tablet: Court ban on crucifix in Italian state schools ”˜myopic’, says Vatican
The Strasbourg-based court, in a unanimous decision reached on Tuesday, said the presence of crucifixes “could be encouraging for [Christian] religious pupils, but also disturbing for pupils who practised other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities”. A chamber of seven judges (from Italy, Belgium, Portugal, Lithuania, Serbia, Hungary and Turkey) said: “The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by public authorities, especially in classrooms, thus restricted the rights of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions and the right of children to believe or not believe.”
Vatican spokesman Fr Federico Lombardi called the decision “wrong and myopic”. He said it was “grave to try to marginalise from the educational system a fundamental sign of the importance of religious values in our history and in Italian culture”. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, Vatican Secretary of State, said of the Stasbourg court ruling: “This Europe of the third millennium leaves us only with [Halloween] pumpkins and takes away our most precious symbols.” The CEI said the crucifix was not just a religious symbol but also a cultural sign, and part of the historic patrimony of the Italian people.
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