The world’s smallest sovereign state has a population of fewer than 800 and is surrounded by the city of Rome in Italy, but the Vatican City has felt the need to toughen punishments for people entering illegally ahead of what is expected to be a busier than usual year.
With 2025 a Jubilee year for the Catholic Church, a designation that is likely to see between 30 and 40 million people visit the Vatican, the toughened sanctions were put in place late last year in a decree signed by Cardinal Fernando Vérguez Alzaga.
Alzaga is president of the Pontifical Commission for the Vatican, which hosts some of the world’s most famous art from Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling to Bernini’s canopy or the ornate Baldacchin canopy inside St Peter’s Basilica.
While these areas are open to visitors, there are sections of the territory that are off-limits or require permits to access, such as the Papal residence and the Vatican Apostolic Archives, once known as the “secret archives and within which runs an estimated 85km of shelves.
Some could be, not least as much of the archive’s content is unknown to outsiders, with access permits very difficult to obtain and then only provided under strict limitations on what can been seen and accessed.
There are even claims that the archive is the repository for a mind-boggling device called The Chronovisor, described as a kind of television invented by a Benedictine-order priest which allows the user to view the past.
But would-be thieves, treasure hunters, time travellers or Dan Brown-style conspiracy theorists trying to enter the Vatican City illegally, or enter sections where free access is not allowed, will face fines of up to €25,000 (RM114,495) and jail sentences ranging from one to four years under the new regime. The rules also include measures against anyone caught flying drones over the Vatican, say in an attempt to film the Pope out and about in the Vatican Gardens.
Various Islamist terrorist groups, including Al-Qaeda and Islamic State/ISIS, have in recent decades threatened to attack the Vatican, where Pope John Paul II barely survived an assassination attempt in 1981. – dpa
