Editorial

President George Abela last Monday made a significant statement which went unreported, quite possibly because it was said in the wrong place and at the wrong time. The location was Europe House, the new home of the European Commission and European Parliament in Valletta, and it was already past 8 p.m. - when most news organisations were still concentrating heavily on the Budget speech.

Even though Europe House was not graced by the presence of four of Malta's five MEPs, nor indeed by the Prime Minister, a packed room heard Dr Abela criticise the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) which held earlier this month in the Lautsi case that the presence of a crucifix in an Italian classroom "restricted the right of parents to educate their children in conformity with their convictions and the right of children to believe or not to believe".

The President said that in reaching decisions the ECHR must take into account the culture of a country. What Dr Abela did not say, could not say, is that while countries outside Europe do everything possible to preserve their culture many Europeans are content to see political correctness ebb theirs away.

Italy has been a Catholic country for centuries and a crucifix in a classroom is as big a part of the furniture, so to speak, as St Peter's Basilica is in Rome.

That aside, there is a historical context to the presence of the crucifix: the legal requirement to display one (which is not universally applied) is a symbol of the peace made between State and Church (it is not a Fascist law as some have sought to portray it) when Mussolini agreed to formally regulate the position of the Catholic religion in Italy.

While acknowledging their status as a secular state, the Italians have defended their position repeatedly over the years. They suspended a judge who refused to work in a courtroom while a crucifix hung on the wall and, in another case, resisted a campaign by a Muslim leader to remove crucifixes from the classroom.

At the height of that controversy Pope John Paul II had said that "the recognition of the specific religious patrimony of a society requires the recognition of the symbols that qualify it".

This approach is correct for two reasons: first, because it takes into account the rights of all the others, the majority in this case. In the Lautsi case the ECHR spectacularly failed to consider the children, or parents, who would like a crucifix to be present; second, because a person of reasonable intelligence and disposition is no more offended by a crucifix than he is by the Star of David or by a blank wall.

It is difficult for most people to know what the ECHR judges were thinking, or not thinking, when they reached their decision (because the judgment is inexplicably only available in French), but one consequence is that they have portrayed the crucifix - which represents suffering, compassion and unity - as a symbol of division.

It is unlikely they intended this. But, as Pope John Paul had warned, taking down such religious symbols "in the name of an incorrect interpretation of the principle of equality" could lead "to instability and even conflict".

It is for this reason that the ECHR has undermined its own authority. While it is tasked with protecting the rights of minorities and should continue to perform such a role, it will only command public confidence if it upholds rights that are actually endangered. In this case it was clear they were not.