This is an extremely actual matter. Mr Adel Smith appealed to L’Aquila court to have the cross removed from his children schoolrooms. The issue has become the question of the day and it is treated as a war among religions.
Our aim is to treat this matter form a juridical point of view, the only one which gives a correct interpretation of the matter.
I myself think that we are not talking of respecting or attacking catholic religion principles but we are trying to establish whether we are living in a secular republic, which therefore respects all citizens and their own religious believes, or we are still in the situation previous to the changes to the church-state agreements. L’Aquila court studies these matters which are also deepened in our web page by Antonino Ciavola, a legal advisor.
L’Aquila court sentence studies laws and rules on such matter. Rules according to which the state administration, whose council of lawyers rejected L’Aquila court sentence, oblige to have the christian cross hung in each school room are very old ones and come from the so called Statuto Albertino (the Albertinian Statute?) which was in force before actual Italian Constitution. Back then catholic religion was considered the state religion and having crosses hung was obviously compulsory.
Royal decree n. 965/April 30th 1924 art. 118 and royal decree n. 1927/April 26th 1928 provide for that the cross in hung inside all elemetary and middle school rooms. Nothing is said about kindergartens, which didn’t exist so far back in time.
Few people know that the Council of state expressed its own point of view 15 years ago (April 27th 1988 opinion n. 63 third section), the note says that old rules are still valid and all public schools should have crosses inside each room. According to the Council of state changes introduced by 1929 Lateranense agreements (agreements reached by state and church during fascism ) and by law n. 121 March 25th 1985 (sanctioning the freedom of religious belief principle and the optionality of religion courses at school) do not modify nor influence the above quoted rules which would remain operating and binding.
This is what former Council of state thought.
L’Aquila court differently sentenced, its own reasoning follows constitutional principles. L’Aquila court stated that according to the freedom of religious believes principles (providing for that religion lessons are optional at school and that anyone is free to follow his/her religious believes) old instructions are to be considered implicitly repealed.
In other words, it said that these rules expecting the exhibition of the cross in the schools are accomplishment of a principle for that the catholic religion was religion of state. Once catholic religion is not religion of state and the republic is secular, these rules are to be considered repealed.
This is a purely juridical reasoning, which finds its roots in the freedom of religious believes principle and in the fact that Italian republic is secular. Antonino Ciavola, legal advisor, sustains that the reasoning can be unsharable but it is clearly pertinent.
We shall talk about this in the future since re-examination measures are to of coarse occur.