The school board of the “Graziano da Chiusi” comprehensive institute, in the town of the same name in the Siena province, had authorized a full-fledged tour of blessings by the parish priest during class hours. The UAAR sent a formal cease-and-desist notice to the school principal, flagging the blatant violation of the law. The institute was forced to backtrack and revoke the resolution.
It took a formal cease-and-desist from the UAAR before school principal Daria Moscillo finally enforced the law at the Graziano da Chiusi Comprehensive Institute. Interrupting lessons for blessings and prayers is unfortunately still a widespread form of misconduct in Italian public schools.
The principal tried to justify herself by claiming it was long-standing practice. Daniela Masci (a catechist and former culture councillor) denounced what she called a penalization of 99% of families “to appease a noisy minority.” Cardinal Augusto Paolo Lojudice adopted a self-pitying tone, speaking of “instrumental attacks on Catholicism.” Yet everyone, including Mayor Gianluca Sonnini, was forced to acknowledge that something was wrong.
“In schools, respect for the law should be a value taught by example,” says Roberto Grendene, national secretary of the Union of Atheists and Rationalist Agnostics (UAAR). “In Chiusi, the reversal on the unlawful blessings during class hours should not have been accompanied by childish excuses about ‘long-standing practices’ and, worse still, by attacks that amount to a witch hunt against whoever reported these repeated violations of the secular character of the school to the UAAR.”
Supporters of the blessings point out that no one had protested until now, not even families of other religions, while at the same time frequently raising on social media the specter of opening the door to analogous Islamic intrusions in schools. They seem not to realize that rights must be upheld regardless of how many people are protected by them, that it was probably the social conditioning — also conveyed by institutions themselves — that had silenced dissenting opinions until now, and that only secularism can hold back demands in favor of other religions. It is no coincidence that it is Cardinal Lojudice himself who, in order to defend Catholic privilege in schools, advocates granting classrooms for Islamic precepts as well.
The UAAR stands alongside those who care about the secular character of the school and provides the following page where parents can download the formal cease-and-desist template against acts of worship during school hours: https://go.uaar.it/pretiascuola
Press release