Call for Migrant Curb
Sept 16, 2004
An archbishop's call for Italy to admit only Catholic immigrants to preserve its national identity was given Vatican backing yesterday.
(16 September 2000) The Church was facing "one of the most serious and biggest assaults on Christianity that history remembers", Cardinal Giacomo Biffi told 200 priests in his Bologna archdiocese. He said on Wednesday: "Italy is not a deserted land with no history or traditions . . . that can be populated at random."
Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican Secretary of State, yesterday called the Cardinal Biffi's words "wise, very wise," and said they deserved to be "understood, not twisted".
Italy's Catholic Church also defended Cardinal Biffi, saying in its official organ, l'Avvenire, that his was not a call to "discriminate at the frontier" but to consider compatibility when discussing immigration quotas. Cardinal Biffi's comments, which included an exhortation to churchmen to try to convert immigrants already in Italy, formed part of a pastoral letter which he read to several hundred applauding priests.
He said: "The criteria for admitting immigrants can never be just economic. It is necessary to concern oneself seriously with saving the identity of the nation." Italy was not an "uninhabited region" lacking in history and traditions, which was fit to be "indiscriminately populated". While it could admit anyone it wanted, no one had a "right of invasion". He urged politicians to heed his words, since "not all of the cultures of those newly arrived are in favour of living together".
He said he had recently aired the same views with a government minister. "I said, 'If you really have the good of Italy at heart, and want to spare a lot of suffering, then you can't allow all the immigrants in'." He said he had warned the minister that civil unrest would be one of the consequences if immigration was not religious-selective. He told the minister: "I'm surprised you still haven't thought things through."
He added: "I don't know how you're going to cope with Friday as a holiday, polygamy, discrimination against women, and the fundamentalism of Muslims, for whom politics and religion are the same thing. Do your sums properly."
Call for Migrant Curb