This story comes to us from AKI;
Rome, 4 Nov. (AKI) - A decision by the European Court of Human Rights opposing the presence of crucifixes in Italian classrooms has provoked a furious response from the Italian government and the Catholic Church. The Italian minister of European affairs, Andrea Ronchi, on Wednesday rejected the decision during an interview
on one of the TV channels owned by prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.
"The crucifix will never be taken away, not from any secular place nor from anywhere in our Italy. I think the government should and will appeal this sentence," Ronchi said (photo).
Speaking on the television programme, La Telefonata aired on Canale 5, Ronchi said that the court's
controversial verdict was "a symptom, a worrying sign of anti-sprituality in Europe."
The Vatican on Tuesday strongly rejected the ruling, saying it was "wrong and myopic" to exclude a symbol of charity from education.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said the European court had no right intervening in such a profoundly Italian issue.
Ronchi was once a member of the former post-fascist, National Alliance, which recently became part of Berlusconi's ruling coalition, the People of Freedom party.He dismissed the idea of Italy being fined for not following the court's decision.
"I do not think (Italy) can be fined," he said. "However, I believe we could be warned."
The court case was brought by an Italian mother, Soile Lautsi, who wanted to offer her children a secular education in the state system.
Lautsi, from Abano Terme, near the northern city of Padua, had lodged the case to protest against the crucifix at the state school. She was also awarded 5,000 euros in damages.
The Strasbourg court found that: "The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used by the public authorities... restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions."
Opposition politician Emma Bonino from the centre-left Democratic Party and deputy president of the Italian senate told the government not to react angrily at the decision.
"There is no scandal, there is no secular frenzy that inspired the sentence of the European Court in
Strasbourg," she told Italian daily, Il Sole 24 Ore. "There is only the simple confirmation that public places belong to everyone. Secularism is inclusive and
respects everyone."
It was only yesterday that I discussed the EUSSR moving on from bean counting and measuring vegetables. It has already started and this is only the very beginning of a larger assault on all aspects of our lives. As for this swine Emma Bonino, you are right; it is not a secular conspiracy; it a Marxist one and moving ahead with clear result. You people know that culture, tradition, and nationalism are all that stands in the way of a docile obedient sheep like proletariat. You know that you have to destroy these things in order to preserve your hold over our nations. I can assure you Ms. Bonino, you will fail.
My Italian friends; I urge you to fight this with every means at your disposal. I urge you to not only reject the filth of Strasbourg, but to avenge this intrusion into your culture and national sovereignty with extreme resolution. The world shall perish into the fires of an ever expanding sun before the day comes that the great Italian people and their nation give way to an immoral dictatorship in Brussels. The long and distinguished history of Italy will not be legislated into the pages of history by an impotent cowardly Marxist institution, which doesn't even have the courage to enforce such laws or face the the Italian voter through referendum.
Activist judges in France shall never have dominion over Italy or her destiny. We must take the first step towards crushing the tyranny of Lisbon, Brussels, Marxism, and the EU as a whole. This ruling will not be the last; however, we can ensure that it is one of the nails in the EU coffin. The torch and sword await those with the courage to take them up in the struggle for the very heart and soul of our European nations. All that remains is for each and every one of us to ask ourselves what sort of mark do we wish to leave on this continent and what responsibility to do we intend to take for her future. The choice of leaving her to swine and Marxist pigs is, to me, no choice at all. We will fight and we will smash this movement into dust.
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