Italy expelled a Muslim preacher residing in Brescia to Pakistan, where he is from

What he had argued is, according to Islam, a girl can be married as soon as she menstruates and with the consent of the parents.

Even if she is nine, and even if the man she marries is decades older.

A video celebrating his rapid expulsion framed it as if he was wrong even from an Islamic point of view.

He is from a Christian point of view, since the Catholic canon law has for long held to a medium age of puberty, as a legally fixed age, rather than any age of puberty, even the lowest, if the parents say so. That medium age is 12 for the female contrahent and 14 for the male.

Scientifically, puberty for either sex can start as early as 9 or as late as 18, but the medium is 14 / 12 and the 95 % mark is two years later, like the Catholic Church raised the age. It's now 16 / 14.

Italy has a quirky view of what 14 year old persons can and cannot do.*

Marry? No. Have sex with a person more than 3 years older? No. Have sex with an age peer within 3 years up, for some reason, yes.*

My mother was, when told in school, shocked at the idea of the age group 15 to 18 being able to commit the sin of fornication, or perhaps in some cases even adultery, but not being able to marry. The correct response is not raising the age of consent, but lowering the age of marriage back. In Italy, the 18 / 18 limit for marriage was first introduced in Savoy / Sardinia and then extended to Papal States and the Two Sicilies by conquest.

Having 14 would not be bad, would need some other societal changes too, like lowering the age in which you can get a job, and in which you can end school.

Meanwhile, when dishonest school teachers are not exploiting the current situation to sexually abuse pupils (as has happened in Spain), honest ones, compared to their ideology, are exploiting the fact that pupils need to stay in school so long.

What Italy forgot in the uproar was, the man had discretely tried to say "yes, technically a girl of nine can marry, but it's pretty OK to wait till sixteen" (the age at which he was married himself).

Some are trying to make this about "will the law of the land hold everyone, or will religions have exceptions" ... I'm not pleading for exceptions based on Catholicism, though I might plead for any Catholic needing one, I'm pleading for a general change of the law. The current legislation is bad. It leads to breakups which could have been courtships if marriage had been delayed for non-legal reasons, or even marriages, when circumstances already allowed, it leads to abortions, it leads to promotion of contraceptives and ultimately homosexuality. For persons who can consent to sexual activity with age peers, the kind of legislation actually promotes extra-marital sex over marital or over later-to-be-marital sex.

Hans Georg Lundahl
Paris
St. Vincent of Agen
9.VI.2026

Agenni, in Gallia, passio sancti Vincentii, Levitae et Martyris, qui, ob Christi fidem, verberibus dirissime caesus et gladio decollatus est.

* Consent for sexual activity with an adult
https://fra.europa.eu/it/publication/2017/mapping-minimum-age-requirements/consent-sexual-activity-adult