Bologna, June 22, 2021 – “The Vatican's use of diplomacy, using the Concordat to try to block the Zan bill's passage in the Senate, is unprecedented in relations between the Italian Republic and the Holy See. This explicit and brutal attempt is to remove the debate on the bill from Parliament and transform the issue into a diplomatic crisis, placing it in the hands of the Draghi government to ensure everything is frozen,” stated Gabriele Piazzoni, Secretary General of Arcigay. He continues: "The reasons cited by the Vatican in the diplomatic note are chilling: reading between the words used by Monsignor Gallagher in the official note, it is clear that the problem is not so much the law, but the Italian Constitution, in particular Article 3, which the law is inspired by, recalling the rights to fundamental freedoms and protections of citizens. The Holy See, for example, views the fact that private schools are not exempt from addressing homophobia as a problem: we would therefore like to understand what the Vatican is telling us, that private schools defend the right to be homophobic? The law simply recalls the Good School law passed in 2016, which recommends that schools adopt educational initiatives aimed at combating discrimination. These initiatives, however, are not mandatory and are left to the discretion of each school's school boards, which decide whether and how to address these issues. We trust that the Draghi government will uphold the principles of secularism that "They inspire our democracy, rejecting this initiative by the Holy See, because it is an interference that surpasses any level ever reached in relations between Italy and the Vatican, playing on the ambiguity of being a religion and being a State, an ambiguity that it is time to question, erasing privileges dating back 90 years. Our country's duty is to protect Italian citizens from violence and discrimination, and this duty, in the face of daily attacks and violence that LGBT+ people suffer, cannot be questioned by foreign states, much less by a theocratic state like the Vatican," concludes Piazzoni.
