If ever there was ever any doubt that Italians simply do not know what separation of church and state means, the events of last week ought to have brought this sad fact home to all and sundry. On Monday, the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights (which is part of the aging Council of Europe, and not to be confused with the European Union) ruled in favour of a suit brought by a mixed Italian couple (the man from the Veneto region, the woman from Finland) to have crucifixes removed from Italian schoolrooms. And personally, although I have always known this is not a truly secular society ("Vive la France", say I) I was nevertheless surprised by the intensity - and the near unanimity - of the negative Italian reaction.

What? Can't possibly offend anyone? And along with all the Muslim bambini now in Italian classtooms, what about Italian Jews and atheists who have long felt uncomfortable sending their offspring to schools where a suffering Jesus looks down on them while they do their maths? When I - who am a non-believer coming from a Jewish tradition - first came to Italy as an 18-year old I remember feeling quite uncomfortable with all the crucifixes, nuns and priests I kept seeing. Granted, children of any faith growing up in Italy will clearly be more used to these symbols, but as a child in New York, I found nuns scary, crucifixes totally frightening and for years was upset because a Catholic girl who lived in my building, MaryAnn, had, pointed a finger at me and shouted "You killed Christ"!

After decades of living here all that has passed. I live among these symbols quite comfortably, appreciate them as art work and not only since I know full well what the crucifix symbolizes and from a humanitarian and historical viewpoint appreciate the beliefs that are behind it. But I firmly believe that crucifixes belong in churches and not in schools, hospitals, prefectures and other public (that's the key word here) buildings and institutions. And the fact that they are in all those places in Italy (not because there is a law decreeing they must be there, but because it seems natural and comforting to most Italians to have them there) to my mind lays the foundation for a lot of other looking the other way when it comes to repeated and not always subtle attempts by the Vatican and the Italian Bishops Conference to interfere in the secular sphere.

On one level it is understandable that Italian politicians reacted the way they did last week. A poll published today by one of Italy's best-known opinion analysts, Renato Mannheimer, shows that 84% of Italians, mass-going or not, favour keeping crucifixes on classroom walls. The poll showed, furthermore, that among Italian non-believers, under 30% really wanted the crucifixes taken down.

The fact is that in Italy, almost no one seems to have noticed that it has been decades since Roman Catholicism truly was Italy's state religion and that the Italian Constitution specifies that the Republic of Italy, formed in 1946, is supposed to be a non-confessional state. Indeed, they don't probably even know what that means. Many of the "ordinary" Italians I heard talking about this in recent days were literally enraged. Aside from mistakenly thinking that this was the work of the EU, they found it outrageous that other Europeans would try and take their crucifixes away. This is our culture, they insist. This is part of our history. More than one pundit wrote that the crucifix was appropriately in schools because "it expresses our country's values", kind of hard to believe when the same pundits frequently express despair over rampant tax evasion, scandals and what some (not me) insist is ubiquitous corruption. No matter, However you looked at it, the sentence, which Italy has no intention of following, clearly touched a popular nerve which may explain why the comments by politicos and many editorialists were, if not heartfelt, then wisely calculated.

Other Italians who may understand what being secular means, and would like to see a change, explain the current situation away with a shrug, saying simply - should you mention France - ah yes, but we have the Vatican right here, what do you expect or how could it be different. My opinion (see ....) is that this is quite anachronistic and that in general there is very little reason for any political party here to truly fear disapproval by the Pope or by the Italian Bishops' Conference. And if the mass of Italians is blind to the differences between church and state (or "brainwashed" about their crucifixes as one friend suggests), whose fault is that? The fact is that since the end of World War Two and the foundation of the Republic, Italian politicians as a group have failed to educate the Italian people on both this and many other important matters.