Word: vaticans
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...vatican hazardous to your health? That's what Italy's Environment Minister Willer Bordon is alleging, and the Roman Catholic Church is not pleased. The dispute, which broke out in early March, centers on allegedly excessive levels of electromagnetic radiation produced by Vatican Radio's powerful transmitters. The Vatican claims that as a sovereign state under a 1929 treaty it is not subject to Italian prosecutors. Bordon says that unless emissions are reduced by the end of this week, he will order electricity suppliers to cut off the station's power...
...sets. Only recently have the health aspects of electromagnetic pollution, dubbed by the Italians elettrosmog, become an issue. A consumer group claims that communities near the transmitters have higher incidences of leukemia among children than those in the rest of the region around Rome, a statistic contested by the Vatican. Two Jesuit officials and one technical expert at the station were supposed to appear in court two weeks ago to answer charges of "dangerous showering of objects," but the hearing was postponed for several months...
...provoked to help Bordon and the governing center-left coalition in May's general elections. "There's a lot of propaganda here," says Massimiliano Valente, an expert in relations between Italy and the Holy See. "A minister can't deal with a sovereign state without following the diplomatic channels." Vatican officials have repeatedly quoted scientists claiming there is no link between electromagnetic transmissions and health problems. The officials point out that a special bilateral commission began negotiations on the problem more than a year ago. They also note that the transmitters fall well within the limits for electromagnetic emissions established...
...being an American. Vatican watchers agree that as long as the U.S. dominates the world economically and militarily, it will have to take a backseat spiritually. No one, it seems, wants a superpower Pope. But what about a Third World Pontiff? Talk of a Latin American has grown. Aside from Castrillon Hoyos, the buzz focuses on Cardinal Oscar Andres Rodriguez Maradiaga, the Archbishop of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. John Paul is the first non-Italian Pope since the early 1500s. A Honduran successor looks like a stretch...
...guessing goes on, and guessing is all it is. The Vatican handicappers are a subtle bunch, so sensitive to signs and signals that they can sound like conspiracy theorists. "Today, from the little I know, all these guys [the Cardinals] have e-mail," says Francis Burkle-Young, author of Passing the Keys and a veteran church observer. "You don't see anything in public. It's really a matter of conversations to feel out blocs. A couple of people let me see corners of it." Burkle-Young believes that the fix is in and that an Italian will return...