GROSSETO, Italy — A group promoting anti-religious causes has dropped a legal bid to end baptisms in Italy after an Alliance Defense Fund-allied attorney became involved on behalf of the Roman Catholic Church and a bishop.
“It’s unthinkable to ask the government to force the church to abandon one of its sacraments to appease a radical, anti-religious agenda, yet that’s what this activist group did,” said ADF-allied attorney Gianfranco Amato.
“All parents have the right to raise their children in their religious tradition, which obviously includes participation in the historic rituals associated with that religion,” said ADF Senior Counsel Joseph Infranco. “This was a preposterous lawsuit, and we are pleased that it has been dropped. Americans should be aware that such lawsuits may seem far-fetched, but they really are happening...and foreign legal decisions are increasingly cited in American courts.”
The Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics filed suit in an attempt to end the baptism of children in Italy. The group claimed that the practice encroached upon their religious freedom and violated principles stated by the Italian Constitutional Court pertaining to free will and personal privacy regarding religious decisions.
UAAR also claimed that because the law does not allow the parents to enroll their children in certain organizations, such as trade unions, the law also “does not allow, as well, that the parents may decide their children become members of a religious association.”
The plaintiff in the case, who sought to erase his name from a baptism register as a form of “debaptism,” withdrew his petition just before a hearing was set to take place. Amato convinced him to drop his lawsuit based on the fact that legal precedents would not support the UAAR’s demands.
“According to Italian law, the demand to remove a name from the register must be made by an individual with a personal interest, rather than by a private association such as the UAAR,” said Amato. “Also, it was easy to demonstrate that the group had no legal leg on which to stand.”
ADF is a legal alliance of Christian attorneys and like-minded organizations defending the right of people to freely live out their faith. Launched in 1994, ADF employs a unique combination of strategy, training, funding, and litigation to protect and preserve religious liberty, the sanctity of life, marriage, and the family.
www.telladf.org