Word: crucifixes
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...spot; everyone else takes home some holy water for a trouble-free new year. Newly elected Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou attended ceremonies on the Aegean island of Lesbos this year, but with Greece sinking under debt and a huge budget deficit as fast as a priest's crucifix, Papandreou is going to need more than holy water to get through...
...latest religious vestige to be targeted is the crucifix that still hangs on the walls of many Italian public schools, a fixture the Strasbourg-based European Court of Human Rights has now ruled is a violation of religious and education freedom. The Italian government announced it would appeal the Nov. 3 decision that would force Italy to pay a €5,000 ($7,400) fine to a mother in northern Italy who fought for eight years to have the crucifixes removed from her children's classrooms. Though the European court's decision does not call for the immediate removal...
...schools (it's also on display in some Italian courtrooms) might be jarring to those in the U.S. and U.K. - even to the religiously inclined - where separation of church and state is drawn with clear lines. But while faith is fading in Italy as it is across Europe, the crucifix is widely accepted by Italians as a cultural as well as religious symbol. The decision in Strasbourg was swiftly condemned by most of Italy's political establishment, from the divorced and famously loose-living Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to the center-left leader and onetime Communist Party member Pier Luigi...
...emblematic of the continental shift in faith. The Vatican's presence within its borders keeps Catholicism a part of the public life and social fabric in Italy, where only 23% of respondents answered "No" to the Gallup poll question. But the largely rhetorical battles like the one over crucifixes mask the reality that Italian life is ever more secular, and the ethnic and religious fabric is in fact undergoing major changes with the arrival of immigrants, including many from Muslim-majority countries. Buttiglione, who called the court's decision this week "abhorrent," referred to the role of immigrants in Italy...
...tall crucifix has stood on an outcrop called Sunrise Rock on the Mojave National Preserve since 1934, but in one of the court's earliest arguments of the term, the Justices will be asked to consider whether it should be removed. The battle has been brewing for a while - the cross, erected without government approval, was slated for removal by the U.S. National Park Service after a request from Buddhists to create their own memorial near the site was denied. But in 2000, Congress hastily passed a law prohibiting the use of public funds to remove the cross, in essence...