Don Murray
Riding with Rocinante: 'It's me or the crucifix'
Dec. 4, 2007
On one side of the Atlantic sits Lord Black. On the other, Judge Luigi Tosti. Both are convicted criminals, both proclaim their cause and their innocence.
Video
Watch Don Murray's documentary, Crusade against the crucifix (runs 16:34)
Lord Black needs little introduction, but perhaps you haven't heard of Judge Tosti. He's leading a lonely crusade against the crucifix and it is being fought in Italy, in the Vatican's backyard.
Italy, of course, has been the world headquarters of the Roman Catholic church and the birthplace of all but the two most recent popes for the past nearly 500 years. The church's influence, its servants, its symbols are woven into the fabric of Italian life.
Sixty years ago, Italy was a defeated country, a fascist state crushed in the rubble of the Allied victory against Nazi Germany and its allies. Under the influence and guidance of the Americans, the Italians drew up a new constitution.
Like the American model, it proclaimed the government to be secular. Church and state would not mix. A fine principle, but no one seemed to notice or care.
Judge Tosti himself never noticed during a quarter century on the Italian bench in the small city of Rimini on the Adriatic coast. It was only, well, let the judge explain:
"Some lawyers casually pointed out a prominent crucifix [on the wall of his courtroom]. I had never noticed it before. I took the crucifix off the wall. I then discovered that the Italian Supreme Court had ruled in 2000 that crucifixes should be removed from all public offices because they go against the state's secular character. That's when I wrote a letter to the minister of justice."
Declaration of war
The minister, in the then right-wing government of billionaire prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, didn't reply. Judge Tosti decided to force the issue.
He brought a Jewish menorah into his courtroom and accorded it equal pride of place. Still no reaction. And so, in 2005, Judge Tosti announced he wouldn't work in a courtroom with a crucifix on the wall.
Italian justice suddenly swung into action. Judge Tosti was investigated, charged, tried and convicted of dereliction of duty. His sentence was seven months in prison, suspended.
When I met the judge recently, he was preparing to attend his appeal hearing. He's an unbending atheist, proud of the support he's received from the Italian Atheist Society, a small band that has tried and failed to remove crucifixes from school classrooms.
The judge-crusader sees the real enemy in his war as the power behind the throne — the Vatican.
"I have no hard feelings towards the Catholic church," he says. "Actually, I do because it regards itself as the repository of truth and expects to enjoy special favours because of that."
Then, the declaration of war: "The Catholic church has committed crimes against humanity." The judge lists the Inquisition, the crusades and ill treatment of the Jews over centuries.
Such harsh language isn't designed to make his appeal any easier. But Judge Tosti denies that he sees himself as a latter-day St. Sebastian.
"It's not that I have any notions of becoming a martyr. And certainly, in other times, I would have already been burned at the stake. Times have gotten better.
"My battle — a battle which I fight utterly alone, like Don Quixote — has, in the last couple of years, created debate in Italy about the Church's constant meddling."
Look out, windmills
The judge exaggerates, perhaps. When he appeared before the three-man appeal court, the only media organization in attendance was the CBC. The debate in Italy is, at best, muffled.
One of Judge Tosti's most visible opponents is a senior senator, once a cabinet minister in the Berlusconi government. His name is Marcello Pera. He is tall and silver-haired, the very picture of a senator.
He is also a lapsed Catholic, a man who doesn't believe in God or the resurrection of Jesus, a lapsed Catholic who is somehow a friend of the present Pope Benedict XVI. Such a friend, in fact, that they've written a book together. Their mutual target is secularism.
Pera defends crucifixes on the walls of courtrooms by describing them as part of a "motivational myth." It's important, he argues, to defend that myth in public institutions.
"It reminds you that you have to be liberal, you have to be democratic. You may not believe that we are created in the image of God but that myth, if you will, explains why we all see ourselves as equal. It gives you the most important foundation of the democratic state."
What's more, Pera contends, the crucifix acts as a rampart in the ideological struggle against Islam.
The wheels of justice
Faced with that complicated logic, which ties together believers and unbelievers, Judge Tosti stood before his judges in the appeal court.
They seemed more interested in a political rather than a judicial solution. The chief justice suggested that Judge Tosti could be allowed to go back to work in a crucifix-free courtroom. Judge Tosti was outraged.
"This is an offensive proposal. It's ghettoization. It's worse than being forced to hold court with a crucifix on the wall."
And so the appeal court justices retired to consider their verdict and whether they might order the crucifixes removed from public buildings, as the constitution appears to suggest. That was months ago.
Judge Tosti understands how the game is played. He's almost 60. He expects his case to be dragged out with the representatives of the state hoping he will throw in the towel and go into retirement rather than lose his pension.
He has no intention of doing that.
He says he'll take his crusade to the Italian Supreme Court and then to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary.
"It's me or the crucifix," he says.
ABOUT THIS AUTHOR
Biography
During his 30 years at CBC, Don Murray has filed hundreds of reports in French and English from China, Europe, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. He is currently based in London. He wrote A Democracy of Despots, documenting the collapse and rebirth of Russia. From Berlin, he reported the Bosnia peace agreement talks and, based in London, the death of Diana and Northern Ireland peace talks. He authored Family Wars for the International Journal, paralleling Northern Ireland and Bosnia. He has covered wars in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq.