(Photo: A crucifix in a Rome classroom, 3 Nov 2009/Tony Gentile)

Here’s an update from Phil Pullella in Rome:

The European Court of Human Rights ruled on Tuesday that crucifixes should be removed from Italian classrooms, prompting Vatican anger and sparking uproar in Italy, where such icons are embedded in the national psyche.

“The ruling of the European court was received in the Vatican with shock and sadness,” said Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi, adding that it was “wrong and myopic” to try to exclude a symbol of charity from education.

The ruling by the court in Strasbourg, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls — a common sight that is part of every Italian’s life — could disturb children who were not Christians.

“This is an abhorrent ruling,” said Rocco Buttiglione, a former culture minister who helped write papal encyclicals. “It must be rejected with firmness. Italy has its culture, its traditions and its history. Those who come among us must understand and accept this culture and this history.”

The Vatican spokesman said it was sad that the crucifix could be considered a symbol of division and said religion offered a vital contribution to the moral formation of people. Members of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s government bristled, weighing in with words such as “shameful,” “offensive,” “absurd,” “unacceptable,” and “pagan.”

Read the full story here.

Here is our earlier item from Strasbourg on the ruling:
The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg ruled on Tuesday that Italian schools should remove crucifixes from classroom walls, saying their presence could disturb children who were not Christians. The decision is likely to provoke a controversy in Italy, which is deeply attached to its Roman Catholic roots.

(Photo: Parents in Ofena campaign to keep crucifix in Italian schools, 29 Oct 2003/Alessandro Bianchi)

The case was brought by an Italian national, Soile Lautsi, who complained that her children had to attend a public school in northern Italy which had crucifixes in every room. Lautsi said this ran counter to her right to give her children a secular education and the Strasbourg-based court ruled in her favour.

“The presence of the crucifix … could be encouraging for religious pupils, but also disturbing for pupils who practised other religions or were atheists, particularly if they belonged to religious minorities,” the court said in a written ruling.

Read the whole story here. Click here for the full ruling (in French).

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

When Pope Benedict issued his encyclical Caritas in Veritate (Love in Truth) in July, he addressed it to “the bishops, priests and deacons, men and women religious, the lay faithful and all people of good will”. That list puts Catholics first, but it gets around to a wider audience by the end. Maybe because of that sequence, most of the discussion about the document has been in Catholic circles.

But in the pope’s back yard, i.e. in Italy, the message has attracted a wider audience. In a rare reaction from a non-Christian organisation, the Italian Muslim association Comunità Religiosa Islamica (CO.RE.IS.) Italiana has welcomed the encyclical and drawn parallels between its outlook and that of Islamic economic and social thinking. CO.RE.IS presented its reaction on the occasion of the Ecumenical Day of Christian-Islamic Dialogue in Italy on Tuesday. Following are some excerpts:

“The recent financial crisis, that witnessed an almost worldwide economic crash, should constitute a further confirmation of the impossibility of establishing a presumed society of wellbeing only upon market rules, excluding any transcendence, any metaphysical and religious perspective, as the pontiff has well expressed it … Just like the market cannot find in itself the meta-principles that would discipline it according to nature and to the function that God has entrusted to man on earth, money and capital cannot constitute a value in themselves, regardless of the finality of actions and of the realities that underlie their use…

“Islamic ethics, from its origins, develops the common principles of the Abrahamic civilisation as a whole aimed at providing ‘joint satisfaction in material and spiritual needs’. For example, the Islamic ban on loans with interest (ribâ) also existed in ancient Christianity. As early as the 4^th and 5^th centuries, the Fathers of the Church, both Greeks and Latins, ardently opposed it based on both the Old Testament and the Gospel… “In the centuries that have passed, the West has wished to forget the economic principles present in religions, basically considering them to be, in modern times, a heritage of archaic thought. However, it is not about ‘turning back’ to some anachronistic and ideal restoration, but to consider, as Benedict XVI has done in his appeal, the real contribution that a religious sensibility can concretely offer in fields such as the economy.”

(Photo: CO.RE.IS Vice President Imam Yahya Pallavicini/CO.RE.IS)

CO.RE.IS says it is not using Caritas in Veritate to call for Islamic law in Western countries, but for an appreciation of religious views also inherent in Islam:

“Rather than implement parts of the sharîa within the current economic order, it is actually a matter of asking legislators to consider with due attention the contribution that economists, financial experts, technical advisors and those knowledgeable in Islam could give for a wider vision of the problems connected to the process of globalisation and governance. It is, therefore, not a matter of inserting Islamic rules into a world that could never entirely be Muslim but to benefit also from the knowledge found in the Islamic perspective on the economy.”

The document argued that an Islam understood according to its true principles and not through the extreme versions often presented by radicals had a contribution to make to the current economic discussion.

“Islam far from any fundamentalist distortions can offer something more, a vision that is not merely ‘moral’, founded on principles of equality and of the search for good for all humanity, and principles that go beyond the simple material plane… “

Therefore, as the pope says, the laws have to create boundaries for an anarchic economy… It is equally important to refer to the supra-personal Truth of God and of his Doctrine of Revelation, beyond any empty formalism: ‘Caritas’ yes but ‘in Veritate’.'Without sincere intentions, the very same Islamic model could in fact risk being manipulated and become counterproductive. The demand by certain radical movements to reinstate an alleged Islamic ‘neo-caliphate’ is extremely far from the true orthodoxy founded on the acceptance of reality as a manifestation of the divine Will and on the intelligence of being able to adapt the eternal spiritual principles to the various eras and continuously evolving situations…

(Photo: Muslims pray at Rome’s mosque, 16 Sept 2008/Chris Helgren)

“We Italian and European Muslims are fully aware of the fact that humanity today needs a new approach to face the challenges of an increasingly globalised and impersonal world, and we fully share the pontiff’s call to not passively accept the globalisation phenomenon, but to maintain our responsibilities even when the impersonal markets give the illusion that the sincerity of intentions can be left to one side.”

Do you think there are parallels between the economic and social teaching of Catholicism and Islam?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Italy’s anti-immigration Northern League party is pushing for legislation to prosecute women who cover their faces with burqas and veils, prompting a new debate on Muslims’ religious freedom in the Catholic country.

The Northern League, allies of conservative Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, want to amend a 1975 law, introduced amid worries over homegrown guerrilla groups, which punishes with hefty fines and up to two years in jail people covering their faces with anything preventing their identification by police.

It would extend an existing partial ban on face-covering clothing to include “garments worn for reasons of religious affiliation,” and removes the expression “justified cause” which has prompted some courts to allow them on religious grounds.

Read the whole story here.

(Photo: Woman in niqab, 23 Oct 2007/Ali Jarekji)

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

(Photo: An archive negative image of the Shroud of Turin (L) next to one created by Luigi Garlaschelli and released in Pavia, Italy, on 5 Oct 2009/Turin Diocese (L) and Luigi Garlaschelli (R)/Turin Diocese (L) and Luigi Garlaschelli)

Italian scientist Luigi Garlaschelli tells me he has been getting lots of hate mail as well as emails of support since our Oct 5 story that he had reproduced the Shroud of Turin with material available in the Middle Ages, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ’s burial cloth is a medieval fake.

Given the controversy that has surrounded the Shroud, particularly since the 1988 carbon dating tests, this was hardly a surprise. One of Christianity’s most disputed relics, it is locked away at Turin Cathedral in Italy and rarely exhibited. It was last on display in 2000 and is due to be shown again next year. The Catholic Church does not claim the Shroud is authentic nor that it is a matter of faith, but says it should be a powerful reminder of Christ’s passion.

Until now, scientists have been at a loss to explain how the eery image like a photographic negative of a crucified man was left on the cloth.  Garlaschelli, a professor of organic chemistry at the University of Pavia, will present his findings at a conference in northern Italy this weekend.

(Photo: An archive negative image of the Shroud of Turin (L) in full length next to one created by Luigi Garlaschelli and released in Pavia, Italy, on 5 Oct 2009/Turin Diocese (L) and Luigi Garlaschelli (R)

No one expects this to be the last we hear of the Shroud. As Garlaschelli told me in our telephone interview, those who fervently believe the Shroud is real will continue to do so. Our main news website, www.reuters.com, gave a rough gauge of international interest in the Shroud in its “Most Popular” rankings. Over 24 hours after we ran the news, it was still the third most popular story out there, ahead of a host of important economic stories and the latest twists in the David Letterman sex scandal. That says something about how the Shroud still arouses passions — whether it is 2,000 years old or only 700.

What is your feeling on the Shroud and the controversy that has surrounded it. Does it make a difference to one’s faith if it is real or not?

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Pressure is growing in Europe for some form of legalised euthanasia but few governments have gone as far as the Benelux countries in allowing assisted suicide in clearly defined cases. The mix of growing public support for ending lives of the terminally ill or brain dead but continued prohibitions on it in the law has led to some long and hard-fought legal battles in Italy (Eluana Englaro) and in France (Vincent Humbert).

(Photo: Multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, whose case prompted Britain’s new guidelines, 2 June 2009/Stephen Hird)

It has also created a legal and ethical twilight zone where for compassionate reasons the law did not really punish the doctors, nurses or relatives who helped someone die. In France, this became clear in a number of court cases where the person accused of assisted suicide were convicted but got only a short suspended sentence. In Britain, a frequently used way to get around the law has been the so-called “suicide tourism” route to the Dignitas suicide group in Zurich.

Pressed by the Law Lords to clarify British policy, the Director of Public Prosecutions in London has issued guidelines indicating when someone who helps another person to commit suicide might face legal action. At first glace, this may seem like a clarification. But it still leaves enough questions out there to leave the issue shrouded in uncertainty. The reception in London has been mixed. Some commentators say this strikes a sensible balance but others think it’s not enough and parliament has to debate and legislate on it.

The guidelines are listed below and here is our news report explaining the story.

Do you think governments such as Britain’s should take a clear decision to keep the euthanasia ban or scrap it? Or do you think they should leave some leeway, as in the case of these guidelines, to let families make the final decision for relatives who suffer from  terminal illnesses or want to end their lives because of severe and incurable physical disabilities?

(Photo: Undertakers remove body of assisted suicide from Dignitas office in Zurich, 20 Jan 2003/Sebastian Derungs)

Among factors weighing against a prosecution are:

• The victim expressed a clear wish to commit suicide
• The victim asked for assistance in killing themselves
• The victim had a terminal illness or a severe and incurable physical disability; or a severe degenerative physical condition
• Those assisting were wholly motivated by compassion
• The victim was physically unable to undertake the act that constituted assistance
• The act of assistance or influence was judged to be relatively minor

Among factors weighing in favour of prosecution:

• The suicide victim was under 18 years old
• The victim’s capacity to make an informed decision on suicide was affected by illness or learning difficulties
• The victim did not have a terminal illness, nor a severe and incurable physical disability nor a severe degenerative physical condition
• The victim had not unequivocally indicated a wish to kill themselves
• The victim had not personally asked for assistance

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

A running crisis in relations between Silvio Berlusconi’s government and the Church deepened when Italy’s top Catholic weekly accused him of acting like a “prince” while many Italians were struggling financially.  A scathing editorial in Famiglia Cristiana, Italy’s largest circulation weekly news magazine, also indirectly criticised the media mogul’s private life and attacked the type of women politicians he has promoted in his centre-right party. And it did so without naming him once. The clever editorial in its online edition on September 16, here in Italian, was unsigned, meaning it was written by the magazine’s editor, Father Antonio Sciortino.

The editorial came several weeks after relations between the government and the influential Church nose-dived when a newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family launched a personal attack against a top Catholic editor, forcing him to resign. Read our previous blogs on that episode here and here.

In the latest episode of a duel between the Church and the prime minister, the Famiglia Cristiana editorial made a number of clear references to Berlusconi and scandals or controversies that have surrounded him recently. In a laundry list of what it said were examples of the country’s moral degradation, it spoke of “escorts” and “high-class prostitutes.” Berlusconi has been at the centre of media attention in Italy and abroad over allegations that he spent a night with a call-girl in his Rome residence. The woman, Patrizia D’Addario, taped their private conversations and says she and other escorts were paid to attend his parties.

(Photo: Patrizia D’Addario in Otranto, 19 Aug, 2009/Fabio Serino)

Berlusconi has not denied sleeping with the woman but says he did not know she was an escort and says he has never paid for sex.

The Famiglia Cristiana editorial also spoke of women politicians and television personalities chosen “for their looks rather than intelligence.”

One of Berlusconi’s cabinet ministers is a former showgirl who has had a meteoric rise in politics. Berlusconi’s wife Veronica, who is seeking a divorce over his womanising, last April said his party’s selection of women candidates was a “shamelessly trashy” process aimed at keeping him “entertained.”

After listing its complaints, the editorial added sarcastically: “But everything is fine. The important thing is to spread optimism in spades and celebrate the triumphs of the Prince at L’Aquila, hiding the problems of a tough autumn for workers and families, who see themselves becoming always poorer.”

The reference to the “Prince at L’Aquila” was not lost on anyone. On Tuesday, critics accused Berlusconi of hogging the media spotlight during a programme on state television about the consignment of temporary homes to victims of the L’Aquila quake.

The opposition was furious after both state broadcaster RAI and Berlusconi’s Mediaset network abruptly postponed rival talk shows to give him more exposure.

(Photo: Berlusconi on RAI television, 15 Sept 2009/Remo Casilli)

The government’s relations with the influential Church have been icy in recent months in part because of Catholic media criticism of Berlusconi’s private life.

Earlier this month Il Giornale, a newspaper owned by the Berlusconi family, launched front-page attacks on Dino Boffo, the editor of Avvenire newspaper of the Italian bishops conference, to retaliate for the editorials he wrote against Berlusconi. Il Giornale said the editor had a sexual scandal in his past. Boffo denied the charges but resigned after two weeks, saying he was innocent but was stepping down for the good of the Church.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Fear of H1N1 flu will stop devout Neapolitan Catholics from performing the time-honoured ritual of kissing the blood of their patron Saint Gennaro when the city’s annual festival begins later this month.

The decision to forbid kissing of the glass phial containing the saint’s blood was taken reluctantly by ecclesiastical and city authorities on Monday, and has brought protests from local politicians. In one of Italy’s best-known festivals, Saint Gennaro’s dried blood is said to liquefy twice a year, 17 centuries after his death. Some Neapolitans fear disaster may strike the city if the “miracle” does not occur.

The phial will be put on display in the city’s cathedral for a week from Sept. 19 and the faithful will be allowed to touch it only with their foreheads. Last week, a 51-year-old man became Italy’s first fatal victim of the H1N1 flu virus, popularly known as swine flu, when he died in a Naples hospital.

Read the whole story here.

(Photo: Pope Benedict XVI views what local Roman Catholics believe is the blood of Saint Gennaro during a visit to Naples, 21 Oct 2007/Ciro Fusco)

In the latest — but most likely not final — round in an incredible case of Italian journalistic pugilism, the editor of a Catholic newspaper sparring publicly for a week with the daily owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has resigned.  Dino Boffo’s resignation as head of Avvenire, the daily of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, ended an Italian telenovela that had riveted the media for seven consecutive days and even saw indirect involvement by Pope Benedict.

(Photo: Il Giornale fronts charges against Boffo, 3 Sept 2009/Stefano Rellandini)

In his three-and-a half page letter of resignation (here in Italian), which he said was irrevocable, Boffo  said the tussle with the editor Vittorio Feltri of the Milan daily Il Giornale had made his life unbearable. For his good, that of his family and that of the Church, he could not longer stay “at the centre of a storm of gigantic proportions that has invaded newspapers, television, radio, the internet and shows no signs of ending.”

Boffo said his only mistake was not taking his initial judicial problem seriously enough. As noted in my blog post here last Tuesday, Il Giornale editor Vittorio Feltri wrote last week that Boffo accepted a plea bargain in 2002 over a case in which a woman accused him of harassment. Il Giornale claimed that Boffo was having a homosexual relationship with her husband. It said Boffo should not have written editorials criticising Berlusconi’s sexual escapades when he was not exactly an an innocent altar boy himself.

But in his resignation letter, Boffo said “the sexual scandal initially used against me was a colossal, fictional set-up which was diabolically engineered.” Boffo says the woman was harassed by someone else using his cell phone. “The Church has better things to do than strenuously defend one person, even if unfairly targeted,” he stated in his resignation letter.

What’s interesting is that Il Giornale, which is owned by Berlusconi’s brother Paolo and regularly attacks Berlusconi opponents as if it were an official party organ, kept up its attack on Boffo — often with front-page banner headlines — for seven consecutive days. This despite the fact that the entire Church hierarchy closed ranks to support him and Berlusconi “disassociated” himself from his own family paper. The support for Boffo included an indirect intervention by the pope in the form of a letter of support to Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, who as president of the Italian Bishops Conference is ultimately Boffo’s boss.

(Photo: Cardinal Bagnasco and PM Berlusconi, 3 Sept 2009/Max Rossi)

On the surface, Boffo’s resignation could appear to be a defeat for the Italian Church. But most likely it will be the Church which has the last laugh.

Like any Italian government head, Berlusconi needs the enormously powerful Church – whose influence spreads like tentacles throughout the country — more than the Church needs the government. An antagonistic relationship with the Church has never helped any Italian government. Even a Socialist-turned Fascist like Benito Mussolini knew he had to keep peace with the Church. It was Mussolini who approved the so-called Lateran Pacts in 1929 that set up Vatican City as a sovereign state after the papacy lost its vast land holdings in Italian unification in the 19th century. And in 1984, it was not a Christian Democrat but a Socialist — Bettino Craxi – who signed a concordat between the Vatican and Italy updating those Lateran Pacts.

The wound in Church-State relations caused by Feltri’s attack on Boffo was very deep. The Vatican took it as a slap in the face, and the Vatican famously has a very long memory. Notwithstanding the smiles between Church and government officials at diplomatic receptions and on national holidays, it will probably take many months of work to repair the damage.

(Photo: St. Peter’s Basilica, 3 Nov 2008/Tom Heneghan)

The chill left by the Feltri-Boffo war will probably not go away for some time. Eventually, it won’t be much of a surprise if the Church seeks a quid pro quo with the government in exchange for a warming in relations. This could come in the form of Church demands for a greater say in future legislation, such laws on bioethical issues or homosexual rights.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Call it a case of duelling headlines.

For the past few days, a highly personal and often below-the-sash battle has been waged in Italy between two newspapers — Il Giornale, owned by the family of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, and Avvenire, the daily of the Italian Bishops Conference.  The generals in the battle, which has riveted Italy and has resulted in one of the worst periods for years in relations between church and state here, are the editors-in-chief Vittorio Feltri of Il Giornale and Dino Boffo of Avvenire.

It all started on Friday, Aug. 28 when Il Giornale published a front-page, banner headline story purportedly revealing that that Boffo had accepted a plea bargain in court in 2002 after being accused of harrasing a woman. The paper said Boffo had a homosexual relationship with her husband. The headline read “The Super-Moralist Was Condemned for Molestation” (see image above). Feltri, one of Italy’s more unorthodox journalists, attacked Boffo because he had written a spate of editorials criticising Berlusconi over the prime minister’s private life. The fact that ultimately Berlusconi’s family is Feltri’s boss was not lost on Italian readers.

Another element in the background was the fact that Berlusconi has been under the spotlight for anything but government recently, including accusations of cavorting with teenagers and prostitutes. For the record, Berlusconi says there was nothing “spicy” in his relationship with an 18-year-old aspriring model and that even if  a call girl spent a night in his house, he never paid for sex in his life. What’s more, Berlusconi is also going through a messy divorce. His wife Veronica says she wanted out because she couldn’t take any more of his “lies”.

Hours after the first Il Giornale story came out, the Vatican announced that a long-planned dinner between Berlusconi and Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone had been cancelled. The dinner was to have taken place in L’Aquila during the annual “feast of forgiveness” in the city that was devastated by an earthquake last April. The official Vatican explanation was a nice try, but hard to swallow. It said the local bishop  had decided (five hours before the start of a dinner that had been planned for weeks) that the money would be better spent if donated to reconstruction efforts.

(Photo: Berlusconi on Italian television, sign says “And Veronica asks for a divorce,” 5 May 2009/Remo Casilli)

Boffo called the Il Giornale attack “journalistic assassination” and rejected the accusations “absurd”.  Here’s our story about the first day of the battle.

If this sounds like a soap opera, it is.  And like all good soap operas, it gets better.

Boffo did indeed have some judicial problems in 2002, but he says he was the victim not the perpetrator of “telephone harassment” and agreed to a plea bargain just to put it all behind him. Avvenire colleagues say he did indeed fly off the handle and have some kind of altercation with a woman in 2002, but it had nothing to do with him being homosexual. They say she had been pestering him by phone to hire her son.

The homosexual angle was found on a one-page report which Il Giornale implied was part of the police record. But Boffo’s defenders say that page was fabricated to look like an ammendment to a police report and sent anonymously years ago to Italian Catholic Church leaders, all of whom saw it as a smear campaign and binned it. The next day Il Giornale ran the following banner headline: “The Rage of the Unmasked Moralists”. And Tuesday it was “The Bishops Knew Everything For Some Time.”

Avvenire has been putting most of its responses to Il Giornale on its back pages and editorial pages, one calling the charges “a colossal worthless fake.” It has also run pages and pages of letters from readers in support of Boffo.

For days, the Vatican did not weigh in on the dispute even though it was blazing all around the walls of the city state. When it did on Tuesday, it got out the big guns, issuing a statement that Bertone — the number two man in the Vatican after Pope Benedict himself — had called Boffo and expressed his “closeness and solidarity.” This seemed to put aside rumours that Boffo might resign for the good of the Church.

For his part Berlusconi has kept a low profile. He issued a statement disassociating himself from the positions of his family newspaper on the first day, but has refused to make any further comments. “Everything I want to say, I have said already,” he declared on Tuesday, Sept 1.

(Photo: Berlusconi wipes face during conference in Milan, 30 July 2009/Alessandro Garofalo)

The fact remains that the whole episode – sometimes slow drip, sometimes percolating – has brought relations between the Italian Catholic Church and the Vatican on the one side and the Berlusconi government on the other side, to one of their worst levels, if not the worst. And the sometimes buffa soap opera continues. Tune in next time for the latest episode.

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld

Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso, a member of Japan’s tiny Roman Catholic minority, had a chance toenjoy some time away from political trouble at home when he met with Pope Benedict on Tuesday.

As his first stop during a trip to attend July 8-10 summit of G8 leaders in Italy, Aso went to the Vatican, gave the pope a Sony digital video camera and discussed the global economic crisis with him.

(Photo: Prime Minister Aso presents video camera to Pope Benedict, 7 July 2009/Danilo Schiavella)

His visit was timely in that respect — Benedict published an encyclical on economic and social issues today, calling for a bold reform of the world economic order to overcome the financial crisis and redirect the focus of business to the welfare of all people.

Aso, the first Japanese prime minister to meet a pope in 10 years, told Benedict that Japan wanted to cooperate with the Vatican, according to his aides. According to the Vatican daily L’Osservatore Romano, the two men had a cordial discussion that “touched on current international issues such as the economic crisis and the commitment of Japan and the Holy See to Africa. On the bilateral level, the good relations between Japan and the Holy See were noted.”

(Photo: Aso and Benedict in the papal private library, 7 July 2009/Osservatore Romano)

For the unpopular prime minister, who looks set to lose a general election due by October, meeting Pope Benedict was probably a personal highlight of his trip, even though voters would not care much.

Aso is having a tough time at home with his support falling on doubts about his leadership abilities and the main opposition party has a good shot at ending more than a half-century of almost unbroken rule by Aso’s business-friendly Liberal Democratic Party.

Pope Benedict told Aso that he was happy to meet a Japanese prime minister who is Catholic and to know that Japan’s society is open to various religions.

Aso himself has little difficulty with mixing and matching various faiths. As we’ve mentioned here in an earlier post, he regularly pays respect and offers gifts to Shinto shrines, such as Tokyo’s Yasukuni shrine dedicated to Japan’s war dead. Japan’s indigenous religion of Shinto is polytheistic and combining that with Christian monotherism may sound like a contradiction, but it is something many Japanese Catholics take in their stride.

Whether visits to Yasukuni shrine overstep the boundaries of Catholic doctrine is a difficult question, but Aso and the pope did not touch the issue at the 25-minute meeting, according to a statements released after the talk.

(Image: Aso meeting at bottom of front page of L’Osservatore Romano edition of 8 July 2009)

Follow FaithWorld on Twitter at RTRFaithWorld