Italian Political Dispute Over Sunday Sabbath

        VATICAN, Dec 19, 02 (CWSNews.com) -- Italian religious and political leaders have been caught up in a heated debate about the observance of the Sabbath.

         The European Union has set up the policy that every member-state must have one day of rest during the week. But the policy explicitly states that the designated day need not be Sunday, since for reasons of “religious pluralism” a nation’s government might choose another day.

         In italy, the designation of Sunday as a “day of rest” was first set in 1993. That policy was changed in 2000, however, when..- in order to grant more flexibility for employers-- the nation required only that every employer produce workers with a 24-hour rest period each week. But by August 2003, under the new European policy, Italy will again be required tu ru a certain “day of rest.”         

         In an interview with the daily Corriere della Sera, Bishop Giancarlo Bregantini— who heads a committee dealing with social issues for the Italian bishops’ conference.- remarked that attitudes on the observance of the Sabbath are “already bad enough” without a change in national policy. He said that any move away from the Sutiday rest would be “a perverse act.” And Cardinal Plo Laghi, the former prefect of the Congregation for Catholic Education, asked La Repubblica. “How can you overlook the fact that Sunday is a special day for millions of Europeans?”

I understand this article is a few months old. I felt it was necessary to bring it to the forefront now as we see this day approaching.