Vatican city tightens clothing rules
Visitors to St Peter’s Basilica have always had to wear “appropriate” clothing, usually defined as no shorts for men and no very short skirts, low necklines or uncovered shoulders for women but in recent years people have been able to dress more or less as they liked in other parts of the Vatican City.
Yesterday, however, locals and tourists alike were surprised when Swiss Guards at the customs point marking the City of Rome’s boundary with the Vatican City began pulling aside people they regarded as scantily dressed, reports ANSA.
At first locals, who often use the Vatican City pharmacy because it is slightly cheaper, scrambled to produce papers and permits but were then told that their clothing was the problem.
Some women tourists quickly purchased shawls or scarves from nearby stands whilst some of the men went off to buy trousers but one local woman stood her ground, saying that, in view of all the recent scandals involving the Roman Catholic Church, it was ridiculous for the guards to suddenly start clamping down on women in sleeveless dresses. The guards eventually allowed her through.
In the 1960s the rule that a woman should wear a head covering to enter a Catholic church was relaxed.
Have you ever been refused entry into a church in Italy because of your clothes?
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no but in Assisi in church of
no but in Assisi in church of san fancesco i was told NOT to read the description of the building while mass was going on!!!!
amazing, i was quiet, out of the way and not running through the place like the other tourist!
Dressing Down
Occasionally I love the Pope.
Well done.
No such rule was "relaxed" in the 1960's
"In the 1960s the rule that a woman should wear a head covering to enter a Catholic church was relaxed."
This is not quite accurate. Women decided to start shedding the chapel veil some twenty years before the requirement to veil in a Catholic church was removed. The rule still held until 1983, when the new code of canon law omitted any mention of the chapel veil. Up until then, though, those who chose not to veil did so in direct defiance of the rule.
From the Atlanta Journal in 1969:
Women Required To Cover Head, Vatican Insists
VATICAN CITY (UPI) - A Vatican official says there has been no change, as reported, in the Roman Catholic rule that women cover their head in church.
The Rev. Annibale Bugnini, secretary of the New Congregation for Divine Worship, said the reports stemmed from a misunderstanding of a statement he made at a news conference in May.
"The rule has not been changed," he said. "It is a matter of general discipline. It began as a custom in the time of St. Paul and was later incorporated into canon law."
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