A man desecrated the main altar of the Basilica of San Pedro in the Vatican uploading to this and throwing six candlesticks that were around, the Italian news agency ANSA reported.
After throwing the candlesticks, the man stood up on the altar, located under the newly restored Bernini bucket, and removed the white tablecloth that covered it, as can be seen in a video broadcast on social networks. The subject was then arrested by security agents.
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According to ANSAthe subject, of Romanian origin, was arrested by the Vatican Gendarmerie, after which he was identified and denounced by agents of the Vatican Inspectorate.
“It is an episode of a person with serious mental disabilities, which has been arrested by the Vatican gendarmerie and then made available to the Italian authorities,” the director of the Vatican Press Office, Matteo Bruni, Matteo Bruni, told Ansa.
According to the Spanish newspaper ABCthe man could be arrested because the alarm of the basilica was activated when he stood up on the altar; while the candlesticks were placed again in their place.
Already in 2023 a similar incident was recorded when a man climbed into the main altar and undressed, after which he was also arrested.
He Code of Canon Lawthe law that regulates the Catholic Church, establishes in the canon 1210 that “in a sacred place” as the Basilica of San Pedro “only what favors the exercise and promotion of worship, of piety and religion can be admitted , and what is not in line with the holiness of the place is prohibited. “
Walter Sánchez Silva
I am husband since 2008. With my wife we have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before birth. Since I joined ACI Press in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Colonia, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the family’s synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Sinodality, in 2023. I follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers the persecution of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as the ecclesial news in the region.