Diritto e fattore religioso nello spazio europeo

[Autom. eng. transl.] PREFACE BY SILVIO FERRARI: This book is in the best Italian tradition of studying relations between the State and religions, a tradition that, after Francesco Ruffini (appropriately recalled at the beginning of the volume), had its main representatives in Arturo Carlo Jemolo and Francesco Margiotta Broglio. In the wake opened by these masters, the studies of history and systems of the relations between State and Church (such was the traditional dedication of this field of research and teaching) had alternating fortune among the lovers of ecclesiastical law, sometimes not very attentive to the relationships that link the right to history and politics. Research in this field, however, has never been abandoned due, among others, to Romeo Astorri from whose school Rossella Bottoni comes out. It is therefore appropriate to welcome with satisfaction the publication of this paper, which takes up a traditional thread of ecclesiastical investigation, modernizing it in two directions. The first is the opening to Europe, to the European Union in the first place but with substantial references to Turkey, Russia and other non-EU countries that are already glimpsing the fruitfulness of an extension of the investigation to the widest space of the member states of the Council of Europe, as promised in the introduction to the volume. This European dimension runs through the whole book, both its first part - dedicated to systems of relations between states and the religious community - and the second in which it deals with a series of questions that are at the center of ecclesiastical interests, from religious symbols to food rules , from the teaching of religion to family law. In both cases the problem is tackled with a transnational approach, which aims to bring out similarities and differences at European level. The question underlying the entire volume - and this is the second line of current affairs that I would like to underline - concerns the existence of a European model of relations between the State and religions. It is a question that, in a time of resurgent nationalistic thrusts (the fashionable word is "sovereign" but the content is the same), has acquired a new meaning. Is it possible to identify a European model that indicates the limits within which the specificities of each country must be contained? Or are we destined to a future of fragmentation on a national basis, of which what happened in Ukraine with the division of the Orthodox Churches would be only the first step? These are questions that directly touch the nature, extent and content of the right to religious freedom, which has historically been founded on a separation between citizenship and religion (as mentioned at the beginning of the second part of this volume) called into question by the "culturalization" process of religion. In this new political and cultural context, is religious freedom a right that must be recognized to all in equal measure, as seemed peaceful until not many years ago, or can its enjoyment be graded according to the nationality of the people? It is in seeking the answers to these questions that the law needs the contribution of history and politics and therefore benefits from books that, like the one written by the author, intelligently combine all these elements.