In what country has a regional court and the main administrative body given the ruling that the crucifix is “the symbol of a secular state”? One would assume it would be in a very religious country. But no, it is in a country where less than half of the citizens declare that they have confidence in the Catholic Church, and where the number of people who regularly attend Sunday mass or choose to get married in church is falling drastically.

The apparent contradiction has a very simple explanation: we are talking of Italy, a state that contains within itself another state. Indeed, the Vatican is the smallest state in the world, but it is nevertheless able to influence the government policies of its neighbour. The Holy See can do so only because Italy boasts of the most pro-Church political class in Western Europe. It is interesting to note that Italy also has the most corrupt political class in Western Europe, but the Catholic Church, which receives large financing from the Italian government (ranging from five to nine billion euros annually) and has its strongest power base in the region which is most firmly in the hands of organised crime, never raises this inconvenient issue.

During elections voters often find themselves forced to choose between two pro-Church candidates. It should come as no surprise that a centre-right wing cabinet minister decided to remove the teaching of evolution from the school curriculum and that his centre-left wing successor made no move to reinstate it, despite vociferous protests from the scientific community. Italian society is becoming more secularised as the Church is rapidly losing influence over its citizens, but the politicians do not seem to have realised this, or are pretending not to. The process of secularisation is unstoppable, and is taking place spontaneously throughout the Western world and beyond, because it springs directly from the highest levels of freedom of conscience and expression, education and self-confidence, as studies by political scientists such as Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart are demonstrating.

However, it is not yet certain that the future is securely written in favour of disbelief. Not so much because atheists and agnostics are having fewer children, or because a higher quality of life cannot be guaranteed for everyone in the world. The future is not yet written because there is no certainty that the highest levels of freedom of conscience will always be protected by the governments under which we live. We must pay great heed to this issue. On the one hand, it is easy to prove that the predominant religion in every nation represents the onerous legacy of past geopolitical events such as wars or the conversion of kings. On the other hand, the theory of the religious economy proposed by Stark and Bainbridge has been confuted, and it has become apparent that a greater degree of religious pluralism does not lead to greater religiosity but to growing levels of secularisation. Religious organisations are quite aware of this, and know that government policies favourable to them are capable of slowing or even reversing this process. In addition, some governments try to build a cultural identity based on their country’s predominant religion. For this reason the current revival of political activism among organised religions does not reflect the spread of faith but rather a paroxysmal reaction typical of organisms in difficulty - like fish thrashing in a net, whose only hope is that someone will cut a hole in that net.

This is the scenario in which the Humanist organisations have to work, and Italy offers an ideal test case for the wider world. For this reason, the creation of a strong secular movement is even more imperative in this country. Our organisation – the Italian Union of Rationalist Atheists and Agnostics (UAAR) - was created twenty-one years ago to defend non-believers’ civil rights and the secularism of the Italian state. The results that we have obtained in comparison to similar organisations are very encouraging. Our membership is growing rapidly (we now count almost 3,000 members compared to 249 just 9 years ago), and this trend promises to continue judging from the number of daily visits to our website (at least 6,000).

We succeeded in obtaining for baptised Italian people the legal option to leave the Church. Thousands of citizens have exercised this right and have chosen to “de-baptise” themselves. Presently we are supporting some key court cases on issues such as the display of the crucifix in public buildings, the teaching of religion in schools, visits by bishops to public schools and lack of equal rights between believers and non-believers. We have furthermore launched campaigns to inform the public on important topics like, for example, addition of civic education in the curriculum of state schools and government financing of the Church. We also organise a wide range of cultural activities, including the Darwin Day in various cities (38 events in 2008), the Brian Award at the annual Venice Film Festival, and the UAAR prize for the most outstanding university thesis on a relevant topic. In every one of our initiatives we try to avoid even the appearance of supporting a particular atheistic or agnostic world view.

Our primary goal is to provide information and a forum for interested citizens, as one way of ensuring that every individual has the freedom to mature and to construct his or her own unique personal identity, whether this includes a religious dimension or not. As Cornelius Castoriadis put it: “in today’s world, persuading through reason is helping people win true autonomy”.

Our - admittedly ambitious - aim is to help build a future in which the conditions to achieve this autonomy are assured, so that an association such as UAAR will no longer be necessary.

Raffaele Carcano is the national secretary of the Unione degli Atei e degli Agnostici Razionalisti (UAAR)