Italy’s PM rejects criticism of LGBT bill from the Vatican

“I want to say that ours is a secular state, not a confessional state. So Parliament is free to discuss”, said Draghi, who is himself a catholic.

According to Draghi, the Italian legal system contains all the guarantees “to verify that our laws always respect the constitutional principles and international commitments”, writes Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

Controversial

In a diplomatic request never seen before, the Vatican asked the Italian government to modify the controversial Zan draft bill, designed to prevent discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender.

According to the Vatican, the bill could “negatively affect the freedoms guaranteed to the Church and its faithful”, writes the Italian online newspaper Il Post.

According to the Vatican, the proposal of Alessandro Zan, deputy leader of the Democratic Party, violates the Concordat and reduce the “freedom guaranteed to the Catholic Church”. Among other things, the Concordat ensures the Church “freedom of organisation, the public exercise of worship, the exercise of the magisterium and the episcopal ministry” and “full freedom of assembly and organisation to Catholics and their associations and organisations. of manifestation of thought with the word, the written and any other means of diffusion “.

In other words, the Church fears that when priests criticize gay marriage in public, they could be prosecuted.

The Vatican is also worried about article 7 of the draft bill. That article calls for the establishment of a National Day against homophobia, biphobia, lesbophobia and transphobia. Therefore, private schools, also Catholic ones, would be obliged to organise activities that the Church perceives as contrary to its doctrine.

Diplomacy

To express their worry, on June 17th, the British Monsignor Paul Richard Gallagher, basically Pope Francis’ foreign minister, handed the Italian embassy to the Holy See a so-called “note verbale”, which, in the lexicon of diplomacy, is a formal communication prepared in the third person and unsigned.

According to the Italian newspaper Corriere, the diplomatic move is a very delicate step. Although the Church’s criticisms of the Zan bill are not new, diplomacy has never been activated earlier. “The Vatican State had never gone knocking on the door of the Italian State asking directly for a law”, writes the newspaper.