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06/28/2008: "Italy lagging on de-Italianification"
"We always thought of ourselves as a monoculture, but immigration is our present and future," said Franco Pittau, an official of Caritas, a Roman Catholic social service and development association that, among other things, monitors immigration here.
Franca Eckert Coen echoed that remark. An Italian Jew in an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic city who lives in an apartment filled with Jewish art, she was in charge of multicultural policy under the former mayor of Rome, Walter Veltroni. Ms. Coen recalled a year when Chinese celebrated their New Year with dragons around the Day of Epiphany.
"The newspapers said the Chinese were against Christianity," she said. "So we held a public event on the Campidoglio about Chinese culture and the New Year celebration, and now we have a Chinese parade each year."
"Little things," she called them. "They can overcome big fears. I saw all these immigrants become a little bit Italian citizens. Culture is crucial to give people here a chance to see that to be foreign is to bring a different ethnic life to the city, that diversity is a positive."
[ Ms Coen should go to Israel and stop trying to make Italy embrace pluralism. ]
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/25/arts/design/25abroad.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin