Turin was the first capital of a unified Italy and has a long history of secularism, so it was an appropriate venue for a gathering of Humanists from the European Humanist Federation (EHF) and the International Humanist and Ethical Union on 16 June 2007. They, and the European Humanist Professionals, seized the opportunity to pool information and experiences, discovering differences and common concerns during the day.

It was encouraging to have messages of support and greeting from regional, provincial and city bodies, including the President of the Province of Turin, Antonio Saitta.

Chairman Giorgio Villella, National Secretary of the Italian Union of Atheists, Agnostics & Rationalists (UAAR) opened the morning session by commenting that Pope’s interference in state politics was driving up membership of the UAAR, so it appeared that he had his uses. Other sessions were chaired by Robbi Robson of the IHEU, Cesare Pianciola, President of Comitato Torinese per la Laicità della Scuola, and Jacqueline Herremans, Vice-President of Centre d’Action Laïque, Belgium.

In his opening remarks, David Pollock, President of the EHF, said there were communication problems between European Humanist organisations, not because of language differences but because of different interpretations of words like “secularism”. He also referred to changes in the religious nature of Europe; “Europe was once a Christian continent. It barely is so any longer. Some countries have a majority of unbelievers.” He ended by saying: …in a secular, open society, unbelievers – call them Humanists or call them what you will – are given equality with believers, as promised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the European Convention on Human Rights and all other such instruments. A secular society is the guarantor of freedom of religion or belief – or unbelief. Anything else means privilege for one group (or a few) and discrimination against all the rest. We need to challenge loudly and insistently all those who oppose secularism to recognise that they are defending unfair discrimination and unfair privilege.

In her opening remarks, Sonja Eggerickx, IHEU President, spoke about the shared values of Humanists, atheists and secularists, and asked if it was possible to say that life stances should not be mixed with public life. Tullio Monti, President of Consulta Torinese per la Laicità delle Institutizioni, spoke about the Italian situation:

Humanists in Italy were fighting hard. Italy’s political representation failed to reflect the extent of its secularisation because of the Catholic Church’s considerable influence, obstructing modernisation.

The Vatican’s interference in state affairs and its parasitic presence in all areas of public life were evident in many ways, as Tullio Monti detailed. Italian women were denied equality and self-determination; Italy’s gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people suffer discrimination; Italian divorce and adoption laws were antediluvian; medical advances like therapeutic cloning were resisted.

The Catholic Church’s attitude towards sex and reproduction were well known. Its attempts to assign legal status to the human embryo had to be resisted. Its motives were entirely theological. It opposed contraception and the use of the RU486 pill. The Church’s position on sex education and the use of condoms had led the deaths of millions by famine and the HIV/AIDS pandemic. This was no less than “genocide”. Signor Monti also listed the Church’s efforts to prevent the provision of sterilisation for men and women, the right of the dying to a living will and legal euthanasia, a solution to the problem of sex trafficking, a review of prostitutes’ rights to safety and healthcare, and a review of Italy’s obsolete drug laws.

On Italian education, Monti quoted the Constitution, which stated that private schools should not be funded by the state. Scandalously, the Church had enrolled 24 000 religious teachers, chosen by bishops and paid by the state. He deplored the spread of anti-evolution Creationism in schools, imported from the USA.

The Church had rejected the principles of the Italian 1929 Concordat between State and Church, and its 1984 revision. Monti called for a guarantee of religious freedom and an end to the state subsidy of the Church. This, and eliminating direct or indirect public financial support, including tax exemptions, could significantly reduce the Italian national debt. With regard to “multiculturalism”, he preferred the concept of “interculture”, and spoke about the acceptability or otherwise of religious symbolism in public, and of “community” rituals. Rites of various sorts were important even in a secular culture.

He ended:

We can see how such matters are heterogeneous as well as strongly connected to one another by a common ethos, which allows us to display the essential soul of an open and secular society, free and tolerant, respectful of the rights and freedom of each and every one of her citizens. This is the kind of society for which we fight a difficult, but strongly motivated, cultural and political fight, hoping one day to see it accomplished.

Dr Georges Liénard, EHF General Secretary, reported on Humanist activity in The Working Group for Separation of Religion and Politics (WGSRP) in the European Parliament. In European Union politics, there was a real opportunity to promote secularism: After having signed a concordat with the Holy See, Slovakia had been willing to sign an additional treaty based, for the first time in the long history of concordats, on the Right to Exercise the Objection of Conscience. The Holy See was willing to restrict this right to those referring to “the teaching of faiths and morals of the Catholic Church”. The group sought official advice from the European Parliament legal service and from a network of independent experts on fundamental rights. Its report pointed out the potential for conflict with health service staff on issues such as euthanasia, contraception, artificial fertilisation and, especially, abortion.[1] (See also the EHF website for a short commentary by David Pollock [2].). Slovakian ministers resigned and the Slovak government decided not to promote this part of the concordat.

Questions to the European Parliament had been prepared on a variety of subjects; one was the famous article 52 of the draft treaty mandating a dialogue between the European Union and religious and nonconfessional organisations. President Barroso was asked to receive a delegation from the EHF, as he had received religious delegations, and this happened on 5 July, 2007.

In November 2006, David Pollock, as EHF President, was invited by the Chair of the WGSRP to deliver a talk presenting Humanism and the EHF’s views in favour of a secular Europe.

A second round on secularism was organised at the end of February this year with the presentation in the Parliament of The Brussels Declaration [3], presented by Roy Brown and sponsored by IHEU, EHF, and Catholics for a Free Choice.

Marco Rizzo, an Italian Member of the European Parliament, spoke about the European Union:

Individual rights were important to Europeans, but the Italian situation was anomalous because of the presence of the Vatican (as had already been illustrated by Tullio Monti). For many Europeans, money was the present-day God.

Tax evasion was a huge problem in Italy, together with racism and economic migration.

Europe had a culture of secular rights and worldwide this ideology was flourishing, but in Italy the relationship between church and state was unfair and unequal. For example: church marriages were acknowledged by the state, but civil marriages were not recognised by the Vatican; the Italian Ministry of Education had allowed any baccalaureate student who followed a Catholic course to be automatically awarded three credits – this ruling had been revoked, but no one had yet told the schools.

The afternoon session included contributions from Claude Singer, from Libre Pensée, France, and Rob Buitenweg, IHEU & EHF Vice-President from the Netherlands, on the “Pillar” system [4].

In Italy, the state had been dominated by the Church for centuries and secularists were fighting to shake off its power and control. In Britain, a Government led by a pious Prime Minister (Tony Blair) had invited unelected religious leaders to have more influence over matters of state. Hanne Stinson, Chief Executive of the British Humanist Association, spoke about the challenge of “multiculturalism” in the United Kingdom:

Multiculturalism was defined in several ways. If it was about allowing people to live according to their own beliefs and culture, without disadvantaging others, few Humanists would object, but it could also be defined as identifying people by one or two characteristics – their race or, more typically, their religion – and then grouping everyone who shared these characteristics as a “community”. If one treated such “communities” as homogeneous and allowed appointed (including selfappointed) “community” or “faith” leaders to speak for them, it encouraged segregation and oppression.

This definition of multiculturalism was currently Government policy in the UK. It was also government policy to increase the number of single-faith publiclyfunded schools, which were allowed to discriminate on grounds of religion in admission and employment policies. A pro-faith policy increased the Government’s reluctance to tackle issues like forced marriage and socalled “honour killings”, or to resist religious demands to restrict free speech. It contracted out public services to the private and voluntary sectors, and was particularly keen to do this with faith-based organisations, which were exempt from antidiscrimination legislation.

Largely through the BHA’s campaigns and government lobbying, there was growing recognition of some of these issues, including growing public opposition to state-funded faith schools, but there was a long way to go.

During discussions, Keith Porteous Wood of the National Secular Society in the UK commented that more religious politicians, and even nonreligious politicians, were reticent about the importance of freedom from
religion, as well as freedom of religion, in the human rights context. Senator Magda Negri of Italy felt that too many politicians served their own interests, rather than those of the state; she said there was a need for “a new Enlightenment”. Matt Cherry, Executive Director of the Institute for Humanist Studies, based in the USA, said that United Nations standards protected the nonreligious equally with the religious, and that everyone should refer to these standards in fighting for the rights of the non-religious.

The colloquium was closed by Carlo Augusto Viano, and at the end of a very full day, delegates from the EHF and the IHEU and the organisers (Consulta Torinese a per la Laicità della Istituzioni) enjoyed a convivial evening together.

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1 http://ec.europa.eu/justice_home/cfr_cdf/doc/summaryop4-2005.pdf
2 http://www.humanism.be/in/doc/pdfs/Opinion%204-2005%20-%20D%20%20Pollock%20-%20Web.pdf
3 https://www.iheu.org/v4e/html/the_declaration.html
4 The 1992 Maastricht Treaty divided European Union policies into three area, or “pillars”; European Communities, Common Foreign & Security Policy, and Police & Judicial Co-operation in Criminal Matters. The new European Constitutional Treaty scrapped the three pillars, proposing to bring all the work under the ambit of the European Commission.

Report by Margaret Nelson, a Humanist activist from Suffolk, UK