The ridiculous ban on crucifixes will have Italians falling out of love with Europe

By Cristina Odone, Telegraph [UK]:

My first classroom, in a convent school in Rome, was adorned with a wooden crucifix in a corner. We were 30 girls in the class, all Catholics who took our faith for granted. It was as much part of our lives as spaghetti and pop songs, and the notion that the small wooden image was an offensive imposition would have turned our schoolgirl giggles into loud laughter.

For today’s Italians, though, it’s no laughing matter. The crucifix in the classroom risks provoking a rupture with a European bureaucracy my compatriots have come to see as invasive and intolerant.The government is appealing to the European Court of Human Rights to overturn its judgement last year that religious symbols in schools are an infringement of human rights. The crucifix, that symbol of a supreme self-sacrifice, is supposedly unacceptable in a European culture that allows schoolchildren to download homophobic rap lyrics, watch sexist (and in Italy, semi-pornographic) TV programmes, indulge in crass consumerist competitions over designer trainers, sunglasses and iPhones.

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