Italian media reported on Friday, October 10th, that a man dropped his trousers and urinated on a Vatican altar during a holy mass, while hundreds of tourists looked on, some filming the disgusting stunt.
The altar targeted was the Altar of the Confessio, a sacred space that opens up in front of the main altar of the basilica, from where the tomb of Saint Peter can be seen. This is the spot fro where sitting popes typically celebrate mass.
The man could approach the altar undisturbed and was grabbed by members of the Vatican gendarmerie in plain clothes only minutes after the sacrilege began. There is no information a this point about whether the man has been arrested.
This vile act is not an isolated case, Italian Catholic and conservative media point out. On February 7, 2025, a man of Romanian origin also managed to bypass the security cordon without beng stopped, climbed onto the altar, and threw six candelabra to the ground, severely damaging them. He even had time to remove the altar cloth before anyone intervened. On June 1, 2023, a thirty-year-old, completely naked man, with the words “Save children of Ukraine” written on his back, climbed onto the high altar.
According to Il Tempo, the three incidents demonstrate the gravity of “a disastrous management, which dismantled the security structure and abandoned care for the holiest place in Christianity.”
