Italy’s religious minority leaders expressed disappointment today over a decision of the Italian Constitutional court which upheld a clause of the Italian penal code imposing heavier penalties for insults against Catholicism than for those against non-Catholic religious groups.
A lower court had asked for a ruling on whether the clause, Article 724, should not be considered obsolete because the Italian constitution establishes the equality of all religious groups without affirmation that any one of them is a state religion. Article 724 provides fines of 800 to 24,000 lire for anyone found guilty of publicly cursing or “pronouncing outrageous words against the divinity or the symbols and persons venerated by the religion of the state.”
The constitutional court ruled yesterday that the term “religion of the state” did not have the judicial meaning implied by the lower court. The constitutional court declared that article 724, like other penal code articles establishing punishments for offenses against religions, with lesser fines for non-Catholic religions, “merely acknowledges the fact that Catholicism is the religion of the overwhelming majority of Italians.”
The ruling held that for this reason, Catholicism was entitled to stronger penal protection because of the “greater intensity of social reactions” evoked by offenses against the Catholic religion.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
