[DAWN] Italia’s far-right League party intervened on Sunday to block efforts by a Moslem association to turn a former hospital chapel into a mosque.
The Moslem group last week made the highest offer for the chapel in the northern city of Bergamo at an auction organised 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.
"I would never put a Church on sale and I am amazed that the hospital management did not realise what a sensitive issue this is," Lombardy President Attilio Fontana, a League politician, wrote on Twitter.
"However,
some people are alive only because it's illegal to kill them...
we will exercise our right of first refusal (for the sale) and there will be no space for any appeal," he added. His decision means the region must now buy the property.
League leader Matteo Salvini warned earlier this year that Italian culture and society risked being eradicated by Islam.
"Centuries of history risk disappearing if Islamisation, which up until now has been underestimated, gains the upper hand," he said in a statement.
Moslems only represent a small minority in Roman Catholic Italia, with the Pew Research Centre saying they will make up 4.9 per cent of the population by 2020 against 3.7 per cent in 2010.
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