__NEWS__Italy_________________________
Prosecution or Persecution?
An Italian government minister’s relentless complaints against Vatican Radio have taken on the appearance of a crusade, and raised some questions about his motivation.
By Alberto Carosa
According to the latest news that is available as this story goes to press, the Italian government’s Minister of the Environment, Willer Bordon, is determined to pull the plug on Vatican Radio on May 12 at the latest, should the broadcaster fail to comply with the national standards on electromagnetic emissions recently enacted by legislation in Italy.
“It is surprising that a member of the Italian government should issue unacceptable declarations and threaten serious action, which is quite contrary to the spirit of negotiation,” the Vatican press office said in response to the minister’s threats. Press office spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls pointed out that an ad hoc Italian-Vatican commission had been set up in September 2000 to look into the problem and find “mutually acceptable solutions.”
The minister’s ultimatum and other similar initiatives are said to be motivated by an overall government strategy aimed at dismantling all the illegal radio transmission facilities around Italy. That may be true, but two facts command attention. First, the legislation that came into force in mid-February, to safeguard the Italian population from excessive levels of so-called “electrosmog pollution,” is the strictest in the world. Second, the standards set by that legislation appear to have been immediately applied with particular zeal not to illegal radio operators but to religiously oriented radio broadcasters such as Vatican Radio and Radio Maria.
Questions of sovereignty
For the Vatican broadcasting station, the ultimatum from Minister Bordon was only the most recent development in an escalating conflict which erupted several weeks earlier. It all began with the publication of a report by the Lazio region’s public health agency, showing that residents of Santa Maria in Galeria —the town outside Rome where the station’s transmitters are located—present a surprisingly high number of cases of leukemia. Children in the town are reportedly six times more likely to contract the disease than their peers elsewhere in the Lazio region. That report caused a public outcry, and protests by local residents. Vatican Radio became the focus of those protests, as residents charged that the electromagnetic transmissions from the broadcasting station were somehow connected to the high rate of leukemia.
The complaints against Vatican Radio soon became a sort of witch hunt, and the protests reached a disquieting peak on April 1, when about 100 demonstrators gathered outside the broadcasting headquarters shouting, “Assassins! Assassins!” To avoid the protestors on that day, and on a few other occasions, Vatican journalists were forced to come and go by side exits.
Reacting to the public protests, prosecutors in Rome opened an investigation into the case, and now three Vatican officials—Father Pasquale Borgomeo, the director of Vatican Radio; Constantino Pacifici, the station’s top technician; and Cardinal Roberto Tucci, the president of the broadcaster’s managerial board—are due to face trial in the autumn. They are charged with having damaged the environment; the prosecutor’s brief could be expanded to include a complaint of culpable homicide.
Meanwhile Willer Bordon has entered the fray with his threat to shut down the Vatican broadcasting station entirely. But apparently Bordon does not have the backing of the Italian cabinet. The most noteworthy opposition to his stance comes from the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Lamberto Dini, and the Minister of Health, Umberto Veronesi.
When he was asked by the prosecutor’s office in Rome to determine whether the Vatican Radio transmitters are located on property belonging to the Holy See, the foreign minister indicated that they were. Vatican Radio is based on Vatican property, he said, and thus the prosecution would constitute interference in the affairs of another sovereign state. Dini essentially corroborated the arguments put forward by the Holy See, supporting the notion that the Italian government does not have the authority to regulate Vatican Radio directly. The foreign ministry announced that the Vatican interpretation of the Lateran Accords (which govern relations between the national government and the Vatican City-state), and of a separate 1951 agreement regarding the creation of the radio station in Santa Maria in Galeria, were “pertinent and correct.”
All the more “correct” were the observations made by the director of Vatican Radio, Father Borgomeo, who recalled that in 1951 the area where the transmitters were being installed was virtually uninhabited. The development of the area, and the construction of homes there, began only after the transmission facility was in place. So one might ask: If there is a direct link between the electromagnetic transmissions and cancer statistics, why aren’t the local builders and administrators, who allowed the residential developments in the area, called to account? For that matter, why are only radio broadcasters being investigated, and not television stations? After all, the transmission facilities of the state-owned RAI television network are located right in the heart of Rome, on Via Teulada.
Shaky scientific base
But there is another important aspect to the controversy. The link between electronic transmissions and cancer is far from having been proven. This is where Health minister Veronesi, comes into the picture. Veronesi—in a series of statements that have infuriated his Green Party colleagues, notably Bordon and Minister of Agriculture Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio—has repeated that so-called electromagnetic “pollution,” or “electrosmog,” has not been proven to be a health hazard. Veronesi has gone on to suggest that the government could use its cancer-fighting resources more effectively by devoting them to more pressing causes. He suggested, for instance, efforts to curb tobacco use, or to guard against skin cancers which are demonstrably produced by excessive exposure to the sun. “To bring down the power lines it would cost 30 trillion lire [almost $14 billion],” the health minister reasoned, “while a law against tobacco could save thousands of lives, and yet it is still just a proposal.” In an April 9 front-page article in La Stampa, Veronesi —who speaks with some authority, as a renowned oncologist who is only temporarily “on loan” to the world of politics—pointed out that the best accredited studies by the International Agency for Cancer Research do not include electromagnetic waves among the 78 sure causes or even the 63 probable causes of cancer.
Veronesi’s interventions are all the more credible if one considers that he is a non-Catholic who cannot be suspected of any particular pro-Vatican feelings, having frequently adopted positions at odds with Catholic teachings. For example, he authorized the abortifacient “morning after” pill, is in favor of euthanasia, and backs the use of embryos for stem-cell research. And his controversial statement that “marijuana has never killed anybody” has been interpreted as favorable to decriminalization of drug use. Veronesi takes pride in his reputation for dispassionate analysis of health issues. “I have been serving my country for a year,” he remarked in an interview with Il Giornale; “but I do not know what electoral consensus is all about, nor am I interested in knowing it.” He explained that when his time in office is over, “I am simply going back to my patients and my research.” Agriculture minister Pecoraro Scanio—whose ideological environmentalism has prompted Italian journalists to pair him with Bordon as the “Green Taliban”—has scolded Veronesi for his stance, saying that it is “an absolutely minoritarian position, surprising and isolated.”
A statistical blunder
However, the facts would seem to favor Veronesi and the Vatican. As reported in L’Osservatore Romano on March 15, a panel of 150 prestigious Italian scientists, during a recent congress organized around the theme of “environmental fundamentalism and scientific information,” addressed a letter to Italy’s President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and to European Commission President Romano Prodi, warning about a campaign of misinformation aimed at Vatican Radio. The scientists explained that any conjecture of a link between cancer and electromagnetic fields is unfounded from the scientific point of view. In another words, they claim there is no demonstrable scientific relation between cancer and electromagnetic fields.
The panel of scientists also remarked that the statistics in the health report on the Lazio region had been taken out of context. An examination of adult cases of leukemia in the 2-kilometer radius around the Vatican transmitting facilities in Santa Maria in Galeria revealed the same casualty rate as the average for Rome. A more careful examination of the health study produced a revealing explanation of the figures on which the entire controversy were based.
There is, according to the health report, only one child who is now sick with leukemia in the 2-kilometer radius surrounding Vatican Radio. The uproar has stemmed from a simple misinterpretation of the available statistics. Carlo Perucci, the author of the investigation on which the health report is based, has made it clear that a single case of leukemia is statistically irrelevant. In fact, the statistics show that in one of every six areas the size of Santa Maria in Galeria, there will be one case of leukemia. The fact that a case turned up near the Vatican Radio transmitters, therefore, implies absolutely nothing about exposure to the broadcaster’s electromagnetic waves. It certainly does not justify the conclusion, drawn from the Lazio health report, that the children of Santa Maria in Galeria were “six times more likely” to contract leukemia!
The scientists who wrote to Presidents Ciampi and Prodi also observed that the new Italian law governing electromagnetic emissions is considerably more stringent than the standards governing the European Union as a whole. And even before that law took effect, they recalled, there were already instructions from the International Commission for the Protection of Non-Ionized Radiations—instructions which were being scrupulously followed by Vatican Radio.
One of the scientists involved in the preparation of that letter was Franco Battaglia, a professor of chemical physics at the University of Rome. Writing in
Il Giornale after the letter had been promulgated, Battaglia bluntly concluded that “electrosmog does not exist.” His article charged that the Green Party was using the controversy to generate support in the campaign leading up to general elections on May 13. (The article was entitled, “A false alarm which aims only at scraping up votes.”) The controversy had no scientific basis, Battaglia concluded, and “one should have the strength, the guts, and the responsibility to say it.”
The outraged president of the Green Party, Grazia Francescato, rejected such criticism as coming from an “arrogant and pedantic science, from which I would have expected more humility.” And Willer Bordon was adamant, refusing to back off his threat to close down Vatican Radio. He announced that he would soon shut down electrical supply lines to the broadcast station.
However, Bordon was unable to act on his own initiative. Two former heads of Italy’s constitutional court, Antonio Baldassarre and Vincenzo Caianiello, pointed out that since this issue was international, dealing with two separate and sovereign states, it had to be settled by the entire cabinet, and not just one government minister. In other words, Bordon did not have the authority to sign a directive cutting off electricity to the transmitters. And Prime Minister Giuliano Amato—having received similar advice in letters from both his foreign minister, Lamberto Dini, and the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Angelo Sodano—suspended Bordon’s authority to stop the electrical power supply. The problem, Amato concluded, would have to be resolved at the negotiating table.
Steps toward resolution
In a goodwill gesture, Vatican Radio has already agreed to scale back both the duration and the power of its broadcast signals, even canceling some programs in the effort to comply with the terms of the Italian law. The Holy See announced that the joint Italian-Vatican committee would continue to meet and search for a mutually satisfactory solution to the dispute. Father Borgomeo said he is “perplexed” by the continuing hostility of Willer Bordon, and told the news agency Zenit that he saw the attack on his radio station as a “classic example” of the demagogic manipulation of public opinion.
Moreover, Father Borgomeo introduced a new line of speculation about the reasons behind the attacks on Vatican Radio. He revealed that real-estate speculators have shown interest in the land on which the antennas now stand. A railroad line has been opened in the vicinity, enabling passengers to travel to Rome in just 20 minutes. While Santa Maria in Galeria may have been deserted when the Vatican Radio facility was built, there are now 30,000 people living in the area, which is located just a little more than 10 miles outside Rome. If the transmission facility were removed, Father Borgomeo notes, a housing development could be put up on the site, and the homes would sell for a considerably higher price than they would have commanded just a few months ago, before the rail line opened and the “electrosmog” controversy began.
But Father Borgomeo may be looking further than necessary to find a motive for the attacks on his station. General elections are coming, and Vatican Radio has given no public support to the ruling Olive Tree coalition.
Alberto Carosa is an Italian journalist.