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Rome taxi drivers clash with police during Uber expansion protest

Taxi drivers clashed with police in Rome on Wednesday with flares and smoke bombs thrown during a protest against a law aimed at opening up the taxi market.

Published: 13 July 2022 15:31 CEST
Taxi drivers' protests in Rome
Italian taxi drivers have been protesting for weeks against a new government bill allegedly opening up the industry to unfair competition. Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP

A protest in central Rome turned violent on Wednesday as a group of taxi drivers threw flares and smoke bombs at police in the latest of a series of protests against planned deregulation of the industry.

Police sealed off the area surrounding Palazzo Chigi, the office of Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghi, just a few hundred metres from where protestors gathered, news agency Ansa reported.

No arrests or injures were immediately reported.

Italian taxi drivers have been protesting for weeks against a new deregulation bill which they fear will expose the country’s highly regulated and protected taxi industry to unfair competition from online ride-sharing services such as Uber. 

On Tuesday, five taxi drivers chained themselves to the gates in front of Palazzo Chigi, demanding “clarity and transparency” from the government over the much-contested bill.

Protests were held in cities around Italy this week, including Turin, where around 200 protesters were occupying Vittorio Veneto Square with their vehicles.

Wednesday’s clashes were not the first time such protests had turned violent: scuffles broke out and smoke bombs were thrown near the prime minister’s office last week during a protest by taxi drivers over the same issue.

Tensions were heightened this week following reports on the ‘Uber Files’: an investigation by international media into leaked documents which allegedly show that the start-up worked around laws in various countries and used aggressive lobbying tactics to curry favour with governments.

In a joint note released earlier on Wednesday, Drivers’ unions accused the Italian government of being “blind to the scandals and malpractice that have emerged in the past few days” in relation to Uber’s conduct in different European countries.

While Uber does exist in Italy, it currently operates on a limited basis in the biggest cities only and the Uber Black service was banned in the country up until 2017.

But the company is now set for major expansion after finalising a deal in May to integrate its app with Italy’s largest taxi dispatcher, IT Taxi.

The move is set to make the app available in over 80 more towns and cities in Italy.

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ROME

Vatican updates guidelines on miracles to avoid ‘confusion among the faithful’

The Vatican updated its rules for supernatural events on Friday, such as visions of Christ or the Virgin Mary, including the acknowledgement that overactive imaginations and outright "lying" risked harming the faithful.

Published: 17 May 2024 16:59 CEST
Vatican updates guidelines on miracles to avoid 'confusion among the faithful'

The new norms, published by the Holy See’s powerful Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith and approved by Pope Francis, allow for a more “prudent” interpretation of events that generally avoids declaring them outright a supernatural event.

“In certain circumstances not everything is black or white,” Cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez, who leads the dicastery, said at a press conference.

“Sometimes a possible divine reaction mixes with… human thoughts and fantasies,” Fernandez added.

The history of the Catholic Church is filled with episodes of strange or unexplained phenomena involving religious statues or other objects, whether in Italy or beyond.

The new guidelines come two months after the Church said that a series of widely reported miracles attributed to a statuette of the Virgin Mary – including making a pizza grow in size – were false.

The rules, which represent the first update since 1978, provide more guidance to bishops who until now have been left relatively free to determine the authenticity of such visions on a case-by-case basis.

Underscoring the complexity of the issue, only six cases of such alleged supernatural events have been “officially resolved” by the Vatican since 1950, with one taking “seventy excruciating years”, the document said.

“Today, we have come to the conviction that such complicated situations, which create confusion among the faithful, should always be avoided,” wrote Fernandez in the document.

Argentinian cardinal Victor Manuel Fernandez speaks to the press on February 12, 2024. (Photo by Andreas SOLARO / AFP)

The new rules call for more collaboration between the individual dioceses and the Vatican regarding such events. Bishops’ final decisions will be submitted to the dicastery for approval.

That is crucial because “sometimes the discernment may also deal with problems, such as delicts (civil offences), manipulation, damage to the unity of the Church, undue financial gain, and serious doctrinal errors that could cause scandals and undermine the credibility of the Church,” said the document.

They include believers “misled by an event attributed to a divine initiative but is merely the product of someone’s imagination” or those who have an “inclination toward lying”.

In the absence of problems, dioceses will be able to declare a “Nihil Obstat”, indicating there is nothing in the phenomenon contrary to faith and morals.

That falls short of an official declaration of its supernatural authenticity, which is generally to be avoided under the new rules unless the pope authorises it.

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