## Facts

- Before November 1993, several Italian courts had treated Scientology as a religion for legal purposes.
- In November 1993, the Milan Court of Appeal revised a lower-court outcome in a criminal proceeding involving members of Scientology in Italy and found certain members guilty of crimes committed before 1981; the 1993 decision did not resolve whether Scientology was a religion.
- The defendants appealed, and the Court of Cassation (Italy’s highest court) sent the case back to the Milan Court of Appeal with instructions to determine whether Scientology qualified as a religion, because that classification mattered to the legal evaluation of the conduct and the case theory.
- On remand in December 1996, the Milan Court of Appeal concluded that Scientology was not a religion. It defined religion as a system of doctrines based on the existence of a “Supreme Being” (understood in a theistic sense) with whom humans have a relationship and to whom they owe obedience and reverence.
- The 1996 Milan decision also relied on the idea that a belief system must be understood as a religion by the wider community, and it found that Scientology was not commonly viewed as a religion.
- The defendants appealed again to the Court of Cassation, producing the 1997 decision (Registro Gen. n.116835/97).

## Issues

1. Whether the Milan Court of Appeal applied a legally permissible definition of “religion” when it required a theistic “Supreme Being” and broad public acceptance.
2. Whether, under Italian constitutional principles of religious freedom and equality among confessions, a court may assess religious status by relying on models drawn from traditional Jewish-Christian-Islamic forms of religion.
3. Whether the remand court properly carried out the Court of Cassation’s prior instructions when it re-denied religious status using the above criteria.

## Decision

- The Court of Cassation annulled the December 1996 judgment of the Milan Court of Appeal.
- The Court held that the Milan court’s theistic definition of religion was too narrow and inconsistent with constitutional protections for religious freedom and equal treatment of religious confessions.
- The Court rejected making “common understanding” or majority social views the deciding factor for recognizing religious status, because that approach can exclude minority or nontraditional faiths.
- The Court faulted the remand court for evaluating Scientology’s religiosity through criteria tied to traditional Abrahamic religion and for engaging in an improper form of theological assessment.
- The Court indicated that Scientology must be treated as a “religious confession” under Italian law when assessed through neutral indicators, and it set aside the Milan court’s contrary conclusion.

## Legal Principles

- In Italian law, absent a fixed statutory definition, the classification of a group as a “religious confession” must be determined by criteria consistent with constitutional equality and state impartiality among belief systems.
- A definition of religion that requires belief in a theistic “Supreme Being” is not an acceptable legal test because it privileges particular religious models and can exclude religions that are structured differently.
- Courts may not treat majority social acceptance as a controlling requirement for religious status, since constitutional protection is not limited to widely accepted faiths.
- Courts should use formal and objective indicators—such as self-identification in governing documents, the presence of rites and organizational forms, and the use of religious language and symbols—rather than testing the truth, sincerity, or theological content of beliefs by comparison to traditional religions.
- A remand court must follow the legal framework set by the Court of Cassation and may not reach the same outcome by reintroducing criteria the Cassation has rejected.

## Conclusion

The Court of Cassation annulled the Milan Court of Appeal’s 1996 decision that denied Scientology religious status based on a theistic “Supreme Being” requirement and a popularity-based view of religion, holding that such criteria are inconsistent with constitutional guarantees and that Scientology must be evaluated through neutral, objective factors applicable to all confessions.


Decision on Scientology, Registro Gen. n.116835/97 (1997)