۱۰ فروردین ۱۴۰۳ |۱۹ رمضان ۱۴۴۵ | Mar 29, 2024
News ID: 348205
2 January 2017 - 10:17
Disagreements over McDonald branch in Vatican

McDonalds around corner from St Peter's sq, open for business in Vatican-owned building, despite resident protests

Hawzah News Agency (Italy, Vatican)-The McDonald's opened Friday in a Vatican-owned building in the Pio Borgo district of Rome, about 100 yards from the Vatican State.

The opening was low-key, reflecting widespread opposition that broke out when plans for the restaurant — quickly dubbed "McVatican" — were made public in October. McDonald's made no announcement, and the opening wasn't noted in the official Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

Only a new golden arches icon pinned to McDonald's Italia's online map betrays its existence. (The McVatican is open from 6:30 a.m. to 11 p.m. seven days a week, the listing notes helpfully. Wi-Fi is available.)

The national newspaper La Repubblica reported that McDonald's will pay the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See — basically, the Vatican's property supervisor — more than $30,000 a month for the bottom floor of the building.

Two other McDonald's are also within a stone's throw of the Vatican — one only a few hundred yards from the Vatican Museum and another about 200 yards away at Viale Giulio Cesare.

What makes the McVatican so controversial, however, is that it's on actual Vatican property. Not only that, but it occupies the bottom floor of a building that is also home to several senior cardinals — among them Gerhard Ludwig Müller, prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican office responsible for overseeing church orthodoxy.

Sgreccia told no price is high enough to justify the "disgrace" of selling "unhealthy" food "that I would never eat" in such a place.

"I repeat, selling mega-sandwiches in Borgo Pio is a disgrace," he said. The rent money could better be used to help "the area's needy ... and suffering, as the Holy Father teaches," he said

 

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