Skip to main content.
Religion News Blog is a non-profit service providing academics, religion professionals and other researchers with religion & cult news
ReligionNewsBlog

Religion news articles about religious cults, sects, world religions, and related issues

Navigation:
Home | Site Menu | About RNB | RNB Store | Cult FAQ | Cult Experts | Apologetics Index | Cult Information Search Engine
A Random Image
More articles about: Italy:

Row after Milan hospital removes crucifixes

Reuters, via Stuff.co.nz, UK
May 10, 2007
www.stuff.co.nz

ReligionNewsBlog.com • Thursday May 10, 2007

MILAN: A top Italian maternity hospital has drawn criticism from right-wing politicians by replacing crucifixes on the walls of its wards with images of the Virgin Mary so as not to offend immigrant women giving birth there.

Basilio Tiso, head of Milan’s Mangiagalli clinic where 7,000 women give birth each year, said it was felt the Virgin’s image was more fitting to motherhood and was less of a religious statement than a crucifix.

“We have so many people who come here from different backgrounds, different countries,” he said, adding that the move was intended to “help us all live together in a more civil way”.

But Carla De Albertis, a Milan townhall official in charge of health affairs, called the decision “folly”.

“If I went to a foreign country, I would never dream of asking them to take down a religious symbol representing their faith, culture and traditions,” she said.

“We should not lead people to believe that we are ashamed of our roots,” she said.

Ignazio La Russa, from the right-wing National Alliance, called on the hospital’s patients to take their own crosses with them and put them on the walls.

The Mangiagalli, Milan’s largest obstetric hospital, is known for its secular stance in defending women’s right to have an abortion in a predominantly Roman Catholic country where doctors can refuse to terminate pregnancies for religious motives.

“There weren’t many crosses in this hospital anyway and we thought the image of the Virgin Mary would be more fitting in a maternity ward,” Tiso said.

Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world and many of those who have babies are immigrants.

Bookmark share or email this Religion News Blog page Bookmark, Share, or Email This Page

 

Read another article Read Another Article

Tags and keywords for this Apologetics Index entry Related News Articles

arrow Topic(s): Italy
arrow

RSS Feed Subscribe to Religion News Blog updates

Religion News Find Related Information

Use our custom search engines to find additional research resources on religions and cults:
arrow ApologeticsSearch.com: Search for apologetics articles, books, videos, and other research resources across 135 Christian apologetics websites and blogs.
arrow CounterCultSearch.com: Search for information about (religious) cults, cult-like organizations, and cults experts -- as well as paranormal-, New Age, and pseudoscientific claims -- across 260+ websites, blogs and forums dedicated to cult research, spiritual abuse, ex-cult counseling & support.

Religion News Find Related Religion & Spirituality Books at Amazon.com

Religion News Possibly related... or Most Popular Religion News Articles

Religion News Search Search Religion News Blog