Free Republic

(ANSA) - Rome, January 22 - An Italian judge who gained headlines for refusing to hear cases with crucifixes in the courtroom was struck off the judiciary roll Friday. Luigi Tosti, 61, was removed from his job by the Italian judiciary's self-governing body, the Supreme Council of Magistrates (CSM). The CSM said in its ruling that Tosti, a Jew, was guilty of refusing to do his job in the Marche town of Camerino from May 2005 to January 2006. Tosti said he would appeal the sentence to Italy's highest court of appeal, the Cassation Court and, failing that, to the...

Monsignor Guido Marini, Benedict XVI’s master of ceremonies, this week strongly underlined the Pope’s recommendation that when Mass is celebrated facing westwards, the priest should place a crucifix at the centre of the altar. This was to make clear that the celebrant was not “facing the people”, but facing Christ. The Holy Father could hardly have made himself clearer on this point. So why do the Bishops of England and Wales allow the vast majority of their priests to ignore his wishes? Why do the bishops themselves routinely ignore the recommendation?Perhaps someone will ask the bishops when they make their...

MESQUITE, Texas - Joe Mitchell says all he wanted to do was make crosses as gifts for friends when he signed up for a ceramics class at Eastfield Community College in Mesquite.Instead, he says, the ceramics instructor compared the crucifix to a swastika in trying to explain why crosses were not permitted.“I felt humiliated and that my spirituality was being demeaned,” said Mitchell, a retired Dallas resident and student at the public college. “The whole point of art is to express who you are.”Mitchell says he was told on several occasions by instructors and administrative staff that he could...

TAUNTON, Mass. (AP) - An 8-year-old boy was sent home from school and ordered to undergo a psychological evaluation after he was asked to make a Christmas drawing and came up with what appeared to be a stick figure of Jesus on a cross, the child's father said Tuesday. Chester Johnson told WBZ-TV that his son made the drawing on Dec. 2 after his second-grade teacher asked children to sketch something that reminded them of the holiday. Johnson said the teacher became upset when his son said he drew himself on the cross. Johnson, who is black, told WBZ he...

Athens, Greece, Dec 4, 2009 / 06:55 am (CNA).- The head of the Greek Orthodox Church has voiced his opposition to a court ban on crucifixes in classrooms in Italy and will hold an emergency synod to lay out a plan of action to combat the ban. Archbishop Ieronymos of Athens and All Greece said that the European Court of Human Rights (EHCR) had ignored the role of Christianity in Europe’s history. According to the BBC, he added that majorities, not only minorities, have rights.The Orthodox Church fears the EHCR ruling could trigger similar rulings about the public display of...

A new PETA advertisement featuring model Joanna Krupa wearing nothing but a crucifix and a seductive smile is "totally inappropriate" and exploitative of Christian symbols, critics say. Krupa, a Playboy cover girl and a "Dancing With the Stars" regular, is seen topless and bottomless in the latest spot by the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, which urges people to adopt pets from rescue shelters instead of buying them from puppy mills. The Polish-born beauty appears in the ad with angel wings behind her and a digital halo over her head. Her private parts are covered -- barely --...

Vatican City, Nov 26, 2009 / 02:05 pm (CNA).- This Sunday, an Association called "Piccola Chiesa" a Movement for Family Love, is planning a march on St. Peter's square in Rome in protest of the recent European legislation barring the crucifix from being displayed in Italian public schools.  The event is being organized as a way to reaffirm the crucifix as "a sign of faith and universal fraternity and a symbol of Italian, and European, art and culture."The Roman diocesan newspaper, Roma Sette, has announced that the initiative is being carried out to show support for "the love of...

Moscow, November 26, Interfax - Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia has supported Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's opposition to the idea of banning crucifixes from Italian public schools. "Italy and other European countries' Christian heritage must not be a subject of scrutiny at European rights agencies," Patriarch Kirill said in a letter to Berlusconi, posted on the Moscow Patriarchate's official website. Patriarch Kirill was commenting on a ruling, passed by the European Court of Human Rights on November 3, on a lawsuit, filed by an Italian mother, who claimed that crucifixes at public schools is a violation of...

ROME, November 17, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Poland's president, Lech Kaczynski and the leadership of the Greek Orthodox Church have both hit out at a decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) attempting to ban the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools. At the same time, a general revolt against the ruling in municipalities all over Italy has been started by public officials, who are now ordering the display of crucifixes in schools, and levelling fines for non-compliance. The November 3rd ECHR ruling, made in response to a complaint by an Italian secularist campaigner, said that the display...

Randa Ghazy Rome, Italy, Nov 13, 2009 / 02:37 pm (CNA).- A young Muslim writer named Randa Ghazy has written an article entitled, “I, a Muslim, Defend the Crucifix,” in which she expresses her opposition to a ruling by the EU Human Rights Court that ordered all crucifixes be taken down in classrooms across Italy.  The article will appear in the December edition of the magazine Mondo e Missione, a publication of the Pontifical Institute Missioni Estere. “One of the most beautiful memories of my childhood and adolescence was of Father Bruno,” she writes.  “I would often go to the...

The Greek Orthodox Church is urging Christians across Europe to unite in an appeal against a ban on crucifixes in classrooms in Italy. The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled last week that the presence of crucifixes violated a child's right to freedom of religion. Greece's Orthodox Church fears the Italian case will set a precedent. It has called an emergency Holy Synod meeting for next week to devise an action plan. Although the Greek Orthodox Church has been at odds with Roman Catholicism for 1,000 years, the judicial threat to Christian symbols has acted as a unifying...

www.catholicnewsagency.com Italian mayors respond to Strasbourg ruling by hanging more crucifixes in schools Rome, Italy, Nov 12, 2009 / 01:49 pm (CNA).- A number of Italian officials have responded to the ruling by the European Human Rights Court that ordered schools in Italy to remove crucifixes from the classrooms by taking unprecedented measures to preserve the Christian symbol. According to the Italian daily “Avvenire,” the mayor of Sezzadio, Pier Luigi Arnera, has leveled a fine of 500 euros against anyone who removes a crucifix from a public place. Arnera explained that the displaying of the crucifix in “places other...

ROME (Reuters) - Some 84 percent of Italians oppose a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, according to a poll on Sunday. The poll in the Corriere della Sera newspaper showed 84 percent of Italians want the crucifixes to stay, 14 percent said they should be taken down and two percent had no opinion. Those in favor included many who are not practicing Catholics. Some 68 percent of those who said they never attended Mass said they still wanted the crucifixes to stay in schools. Italy has said it...

ROME, November 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - The recent decision by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) condemning the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools could result in the removal of all public displays of a Christian origin in all public buildings of Europe under the newly passed Lisbon Treaty, a British legal expert has warned. Given the intimate connections between the ECHR, the Lisbon Treaty and the European Convention on Human Rights, UK barrister and anti-discrimination law expert Neil Addison told LifeSiteNews.com (LSN), "unless the European Court of Human Rights overrules itself on appeal, Italy, and indeed the...

VIENNA, Austria, NOV. 6, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Real religious freedom is not freedom from religion, says a historian writing in response to this week's European court decision discouraging crucifixes in Italian schools. Martin Kugler, an expert for the human rights network Christianophobia.eu in Vienna, offered 12 theses to unveil the mistaken thinking of the court, which decided in favor of an atheist mother who protested the crucifix in her children's school. Kugler explained: "The right to religious freedom can only mean its exercise -- not the freedom from confrontation. The meaning of 'freedom of religion' has nothing to do with creating...

“Blessed is the nation whose God is the LORD, The people whom he has chosen for his own inheritance.” - Psalm 33: 12 On Tuesday, the European Court of Human Rights fined the Italian government for having crucifixes in its schools. It’s yet another example of oversize, secular bureaucracies pitted against the most natural forms of agreement, in this case the nation. The European Court of Human Rights ordered that the government pay 5,000 Euro ($7,390) to Soile Lautsi, a mother of two who claimed that public schools in her northern Italian town refused eight years ago to remove...

Cardinal: Pumpkins, Not Crucifixes? Responds to European Court Decision on Schools VATICAN CITY, NOV. 5, 2009 (Zenit.org).- In European schools, crucifixes are prohibited but Halloween pumpkins are promoted, observed Benedict XVI's Secretary of State. Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone stated this in response to the Tuesday decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which called for the removal of Christian symbols from public school classrooms. "This Europe of the third millennium only leaves us the pumpkins of the feasts repeatedly celebrated and takes away from us our most cherished symbols," said the cardinal in an article published in L'Osservatore Romano. He...

Rome, Italy, Nov 4, 2009 / 10:21 am (CNA).- Italy’s Minister of Education, Mariastella Gelmini, has rejected the ruling by the European Court of Human Rights in favor of removing crucifixes from public schools.  She stated, “Nobody, much less a European court that is steeped in ideology, will be allowed to strip our identity away.” The court ruled the presence of crucifixes in classrooms could be a “bother” to students who practice other faiths or who are atheists and that the State should abstain from imposing beliefs in public places. “Religious neutrality should be observed in the context of public...

Italy's bishops are saying the European Court of Human Rights is guilty of a partial and ideological outlook with its Tuesday decision that crucifixes in public school are a violation of freedom. The Vatican and the Italian government expressed dismay with Tuesday's decision and Italian bishops expressed their own perplexity. The court ruled in favor of an Italian citizen of Finnish origin who complained in 2002 that the state school where her two children studied violated their freedom by displaying crucifixes. The school's administration refused to remove them, contending that the crucifix is part of Italian cultural patrimony; Italian courts...

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled against the use of crucifixes in classrooms in Italy. It said the practice violated the right of parents to educate their children as they saw fit, and ran counter to the child's right to freedom of religion. The case was brought by an Italian mother, Soile Lautsi, who wants to give her children a secular education. But the ruling has sparked anger in the largely Catholic country, with one politician calling the move "shameful". The Strasbourg court found that: "The compulsory display of a symbol of a given confession in premises used...