Divine intervention? Anti-God campaign sputters in Italy

[Lost-in-FL]

http://www.iht.com/articles/2009/01/19/europe/italy.4-411512.php

Italian nonbelievers have learned that godlessness has no place in society - or at least not on public buses - after plans to launch ads in Genoa similar to the recent Atheist Bus Campaign in Britain were shot to hell.

What they do believe is that Vatican pressure, overt or not, is what induced the agency that handles publicity on municipal buses to turn down the ad that proclaims:

"The bad news is that God doesn't exist, the good news is that you don't need him."

"In Italy, to do such things just isn't possible," said Giorgio Villella, the events coordinator for the Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics, the organization that sponsored the bus ads in Genoa, home of the president of the Italian Episcopal Conference.

Here, as in the rest of Europe, society is becoming increasingly secularized, but the church "remains very strong politically," holding parties hostage and influencing much of what happens in Italy, Villella said.