Atheist Bus Poster Campaign Moves to Genoa

January 14, 2009

Author: Richard Owen

Source: The Times Online

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5510761.ece

The British-inspired atheist bus poster campaign today (Tuesday) moved closer to the Vatican after the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) said slogans proclaiming that God does not exist would appear from next month (February) on buses in Genoa.

Father Gianfranco Celabrese, a spokesman for Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, the Archbishop of Genoa and head of the Italian Bishops Conference, attacked the atheist campaign, saying it amounted to "intolerance". Vatican officials were said to be alarmed at reports that the atheist campaign would target Rome next.

Father Calabrese said: "There are some methods which promote dialogue and others which feed intolerance. Head-on opposition always demonstrates intolerance." The Genoa bus campaign will use the slogan: "The bad news is that God does not exist. The good news is that we do not need him", rather than the claim by campaigners in Britain and Spain that God "probably" does not exist.

The UAAR said it had chosen Genoa deliberately in order to challenge Roman Catholic beliefs "on Bagnasco's own turf." Cardinal Bagnasco, who is close to Pope Benedict XVI, is an outspoken opponent of artificial insemination and gay marriage, and last June opposed a Gay Pride march in Genoa staged on the same day as the feast of Corpus Domini.

Raffaele Carcano, head of UAAR, said the Genoa campaign was "not a provocation" but an attempt to link the concept of "living without faith" to Italy's secular rather than Catholic traditions. It was partly aimed at "the positions taken by the Church on civil rights, reproduction and scientific research".