On Display in Italy: Classroom Crosses, and a Raw Nerve:

Ms. Berardi, who said that she seldom attends church, was referring to the cross as a visual motif throughout Italy, and she kept repeating herself.

"It's always been there," she said. "It's how we were taught. It's the way it's always been."

The gist of the article is that Italy is debating the result a court case, similar to our pledge-of-allegiance case, which ruled that the Catholic cross hanging in a classroom had to be taken down. The article doesn't explain the legal reasoning, but I assume it's a similar separation of church and state rationale. When I was in elementary school in Spain, there was no cross on the wall in the classroom (only a picture of SSMM the king and queen), but we did say the Hail Mary every morning before class started. My teacher for those years was a very conservative Spanish woman. So I can understand where the lady quoted above is coming from.