Vatican City, Mar 21, 2011 / 14:54 pm
The Vatican has welcomed the European Court of Human Rights' decision to overturn a ruling that would have banned the display of crucifixes in Italian public schools.
Following the March 18 ruling,Vatican Spokesman Fr. Federico Lombardi stated that the court's decision to allow the crosses to remain “has been received with satisfaction by the Holy See.”
He hailed the “historic and significant sentence” as a sign of reconciliation between the court and those who viewed its initial ruling by a lower chamber as a serious error.
“This new sentence of the Grande Chamber,” he said, “effectively contributes to re-establishing trust in the European Court of Human Rights on the part of a large number of Europeans.”