The System of Bilateral Legislation Tested by ‘Neo’ Religious Groups: The Case of Italy

In the last few decades, immigration and globalization have seen the rise of transnational cultural exchanges across Italy. This influx of new people and cultures has enabled Italians to gain access to other doctrines outside of their own traditional confessions. This has had an important effect on the State’s religious landscape, bringing about a transition from a weak pluralism to a more diverse religious identity. Italy’s new pluralistic religious identity is considerably less intense than the pluralistic societies of other European countries, such as France and the United Kingdom. Italy’s current religious identity, however, is much more diversified compared to the State’s experience nearly three decades ago. This article will focus the attention on two very basic questions: firstly, how has Italy’s legal system reacted to this new religious pluralism? Secondly, is the Italian system of Churches-State relationships effective and able to govern this new situation? The relevancy of these questions becomes more distinct when related to the agreements between the public institutions and religious groups, established in Italy’s 1948 Constitution and referenced in Articles 7 and 8. Both of these provisions established the bilateralism principle, resulting from the bilateral Churches-State relations. In the light of Italy’s new pluralism, this method is currently outdated. In particular, this method proves to be challenging not only for some minority religious and non-religious groups, as is the case of Islam(s) and militant atheisms but also problematic for the Catholic Church. An example of this can be seen in the recent judicial rulings concerning the 1984 Agreement between the Catholic Holy See and the State, which modified the 1929 Lateran Pacts. In other words, the bilateralism principle can be perfectly used when referring to traditional Judeo-Christian denominations. On the contrary, it can hardly be considered for other minority groups, other than the traditional ones. Moreover, the bilateralism principle does not fit in easily with current Italian society that, due to immigration and globalization, is no a longer monocultural society.