Free Republic

Italy’s far-right League party intervened on Sunday to block efforts by a Muslim association to turn a former hospital chapel into a mosque. The Muslim group last week made the highest offer for the chapel in the northern city of Bergamo at an auction organized by a local hospital, outbidding the Romanian Orthodox Church which had been using the building for its religious services. But the project proved short-lived, with League leaders in the wealthy Lombardy region, which includes Bergamo, announcing they would halt the sale by using a 2004 law that enables them to intervene and safeguard cultural sites....

Members of the far-left Autonomous University Collective (CUA) have sparked controversy after releasing posters of populist Italian interior minister Matteo Salvini calling for his assassination. The far-left group debuted the poster at a university event in Bologna this week which bears the caption, “Assassin. Take aim at this,” and shows a picture of Salvini with a target around his head, Il Giornale reports.

Pope Francis has a problem: Italian Catholics. In the home of the Vatican, believers are increasingly attracted by the hard-line stance of Interior Minister Matteo Salvini. Francis and Salvini espouse radically different approaches to migration. Where the pope has called on countries to take care of the less fortunate, Salvini has turned his close-the-borders approach to immigration into an electoral warhorse. The trouble for Francis is that Salvini seems to be winning — even among Catholic voters.

Italian Interior Minister: “Enough now with this ‘parent 1 and 2. I have restored mother and father” Claudio Cartaldo "Il Giornale" August 10, 2018 Salvini’s blitz on forms for identity cards - it’s back to the past and “No to the horror of “surrogate motherhood”.  Gone ‘parent n.1’ and ‘parent n.2’.  Back to what is natural: mother and father. Matteo Salvini launches the revolution also in the area of the family and gives the go ahead to re-examine the forms for identity cards.  [Excerpts] In an interview to La Bussola Quotidiano, the Interior Minister takes the side in defense of...

And by that same principle, you may find it prudent – if your country is being inundated – to seek other ways of solving the crisis, as some European governments have already been doing, by helping countries to create opportunities and to retain their own young people (which is to say their future). And to prevent dangerous and illegal crossings of the Mediterranean. Either way, you are involved in political deliberation, not diabolical opposition to the Gospel.

Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has announced his intention to form a grand alliance of populists from across Europe ahead of next year’s European Union parliamentary elections. The populist leader of the League (Lega), which formed an anti-establishment coalition earlier this year with the Five Star Movement (M5S), made his comments on Friday, saying that he wanted to unite the populist parties to challenge the establishment parliamentary groups, Kronen Zeitung reports. “I want to unite the parties that will form the new majority in the European Parliament, the parties in Austria, the Netherlands, Sweden, France, and Germany,” Salvini said. The...

Italy’s hardline Interior Minister Matteo Salvini on Thursday said he wanted to put a complete stop to migrant arrivals in Italy by boat. The aim is that “not one more person arrives by boat” on Italian shores, said Salvini during a news conference with Ahmed Maiteeq, vice president of the Libyan UN-backed Government of National Accord. Salvini said that as “a minister and a father” he did not want any more “women or babies to get into rubber dinghies”. […] “Pregnant women, children and refugees will remain in Italy,” said the minister, who has promised to speed up deportations of...

In the early years, when he was still a secessionist who believed northern Italy should break off and become an independent state called Padania, Matteo Salvini held his fellow countrymen in such contempt that he even supported Germany over Italy in the 2006 World Cup. “Italy ... is the worst of the worst,” he said at the time. “My support goes to anyone who is more serious.” Today, the 45-year-old has adopted “Italians first” as a political ideology and is in many ways the European leader who most resembles Donald Trump, from his embrace of impulsive and often racist rhetoric,...

Leader of Italy’s eurosceptic party Lega, Matteo Salvini, heavily criticised Islam in an interview. Salvini said that Islam sees women as inferior and is a law instead of a religion. As a law it is incompatible with Italian values, he said. Asked about mosques, Salvini said he could shut down illegal mosques. Salvini could become Italy’s next Prime Minister as he takes part in a popular centre-right bloc in Italy’s elections. In several regions he already leads the polls and his support is growing.

The leader of Italy’s Northern League party, Matteo Salvini, said he intends to beat out other parties in establishing direct relations with the Trump administration. Salvini, who traveled to the United States to show his support for Trump during the campaign cycle last April, told Breitbart News Thursday that his party shares many of the perspectives of the new administration and is a logical ally for the future. “On many issues we see eye-to-eye with President Trump and we look forward to partnering with his administration,” Salvini told Breitbart. This privileged partnership will be built upon common interests including “labor,...