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Italy is undergoing a telecommunications revolution, and the portable phone market here is now worth billions of dollars. Italy's telecommunications market has been privatized, resulting in vigorous competition, especially for the portable phone market—Italy's 57 million residents own a total of 40 million portable phones, one of the highest rates in the world.

To ensure the efficient functioning of the mobile network, antennae and transmitters need to be placed at the top of buildings across the country. As in some other European countries, telecommunications companies decided that churches, generally the highest buildings in Italian cities and villages, would be ideal places for the telecommunications antennae.

In Italy the Catholic Church has 27,000 parishes, 100,000 churches, and 1,500 monasteries—in other words, tens of thousands of spires and church towers.

Dozens of parishes have already accepted contracts with companies that want to install antennae. But some of the nation's bishops, alerted to the swift growth of this phenomenon, decided to seek advice from the Bishops' Conference.

Bishop Ennio Antonelli, the 64-year-old general secretary of the Bishops' Conference, which groups Italy's 200-plus Catholic dioceses, wrote to his fellow bishops in December (though the letter was not published until this month) advising them to refuse requests to install antennae on churches.

Bishop Antonelli gives a number of reasons for his advice. Canon 1220 of church law stipulates that anything that could harm the sanctity of a church building must be avoided. He adds that the presence of the antennae could also be at odds with laws regulating relations between the Italian state and the Catholic Church. Under Italian law a building used for worship is exempt from tax, but this might not be the case if the building became a source of revenue.

Bishop Antonelli adds that a sacred building is a "cultural asset" which must be protected from anything that could compromise its integrity, spoil its appearance or interfere with its principal function.

He also refers to the debate over the possible health risks from transmitters. Until there is confirmation or denial of the risks, the church should wait.

A spokesman for the Bishops' Conference told ENI that Bishop Antonelli's message provided "general principles" to bishops, but left each bishop free to decide at a local level whether antennae could be installed. For example, the spokesman said, in certain isolated mountain villages an antenna on a church tower might be the only possible way for the residents to maintain contact with the rest of the country.

But even in a situation such as this, it should be clear that the church was offering a "temporary service to residents and without making any financial gain."

The spokesman said, however, that Bishop Antonelli generally urged parishes to remove antennae which had been installed, except in a few, rare situations. In these cases, the telephone companies should pay the church. "But we do not want mammon ruling the church," he said.

Don Luigi Adami, parish priest of San Zeno di Colognola ai Colli, near Verona, told ENI: "I agree with Bishop Antonelli. We must not allow our church towers to become a forest of antennae and transmitters. That would disfigure the countryside and could be harmful to our health because of the electromagnetic waves. And, above all, if the church gives in to the arguments of the huge telephone companies, it could become a slave to economic power."

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March (Web-only) 2001, Vol. 45