Though these tortellini are the pride of Bolognese cuisine, Archbishop Matteo Zuppi (just chosen by Pope Francis to be a cardinal) decided that the Church did not want in any way to offend Muslims, as would happen, apparently, if Muslim guests had to endure even the sight of such pork-based foods.

The possibility of  keeping the traditional pork-filled tortellini but also offering an alternative for Muslims, such as cheese-based tortellini, or spaghetti Bolognese, was apparently deemed insufficient to assuage Muslim sensibilities. And years before this tortellini brouhaha, a desire in Bologna to placate Muslim demands of a quite different sort led to a similar surrender

In 47 years, from 1970 to 2017, the Muslim population in Italy, both of citizens and migrants, has gone from 2,000 (in 1970) to 1.6 million, at the beginning of 2017, and should reach 2 million by the end of 2020. In other words, the number of Muslims in Italy will have increased more than one thousand times in a half-century.

Should we care? Consider just the art works – Italy is one vast repository of Western art — that are threatened, and those that already have been damaged, or made impossible to see, by the Muslims who have settled in Italy. Now that the Diocese of Bologna has insisted that the Feast of San Petronio be celebrated with pork-free tortellini, perhaps it’s time to remind ourselves of what else has been done to placate Muslims in Bologna. And that has to do with Giovanni da Modena’s celebrated fresco, in a side chapel of the Basilica di San Petronio itself, illustrating Dante’s Inferno.