“While the country continues to navigate an extremely difficult phase, like clockwork the Catholic Church advances its demands for funding for Catholic private schools. The 120 million euro that has been allocated with the emergency act are not enough. They want a billion. It is always the same story: the government accommodates the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI) by redirecting funds away from public schools, under the usual false pretense that private schools areessential, and it would be a disaster without them. A real bit… Read more »
Monthly Archives: May 2020
Tax rebates to the State or the Church? Uaar is leading the conversation while the government takes a back seat
Starting today, Italians can send in their income tax forms and choose their preferred organization to receive 8‰ (eight one-thousandths, in Italy commonly known as 8×1000) of their income tax return. The Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (Uaar), which has always fought for the abolition of this mechanism that drains public resources in favor of selected religious denominations, in the face of the usual lack of interest of the State for its share, invites taxpayers to express an… Read more »
Religious celebrations are back: and the Catholic Church gets preferential treatment
«Once again, public policy is powerless over requests for special permissions coming from the Catholic Church. The government has given priority to religious meetings while other types of meetings continue to be banned (theaters, book presentations, meetings in social and cultural centers, cinemas, right down to education in public schools). Under pressure from the bishops, the government implemented a special regime for religious meetings, a special regime prohibited by sentence no. 45/1957 of the Constitutional Court. Freedom of assembly should… Read more »
Allocate the 8×1000 portion of tax returns under State competence to investments in the national health service.
This is the request at the heart of the petition launched today on change.org by the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR). “With the current opaque 8×1000 mechanism, repeatedly condemned by the Court of Auditors, every year the state gives religious institutions a share that exceeds one billion euros”, reads the text of the petition: “Sign if you want more than a billion euros a year to remain to the State and be used for research and health, without paying… Read more »