Paid churches? For MiBACT, no: free admission should be the rule

To enter a church, one should not have to pay a ticket, except for exceptional reasons: this is the guideline that the Ministry of Cultural Heritage and Activities and Tourism has issued, through Undersecretary Anna Laura Orrico, who responded to a parliamentary question addressed by Senator Iunio Valerio Romano of the 5 Star Movement about the introduction of a ticket to visit the Cathedral complex in Lecce in May last year. The question dates back to Oct. 22, 2019, and the undersecretary responded on Aug. 5 (the answer, however, was published only a few hours ago).

Romano, and with him the other signatories (Sergio Romagnoli, Barbara Guidolin, Giuseppe Audino, Cinzia Leone, Fabrizio Ortis, Luisa Angrisani, Daniela Donno, Patty L’Abbate, Barbara Lezzi, Gabriele Lanzi, Rossella Accoto, Raffaele Mautone, Gaspare Antonio Marinello, Vincenzo Garruti, Agnese Gallicchio, Vilma Moronese, Angela Anna Bruna Piarulli, Cataldo Mininno, Susy Matrisciano, Simona Nunzio Nocerino, Antonella Campagna, all Pentastellati, and Luigi Di Marzio of the mixed group), pointed out that the Lecce curia’s measure restricted “the full usability of public spaces and access to assets of historical and cultural interest, built with money from the community and that belong to the community,” and was incompatible “with the role of tourist and cultural hub that Salento and the city of Lecce, in particular, play, both because of the cost imposed and because of the way in which places of worship are purchased and accessed.” Also according to the petitioners, the initiative marked a “vulnus with respect to the operativeness of the principle of free and unrestricted access to sacred buildings, which has always been proper to the tradition of the Catholic Church in Italy and which, globally considered, presents profiles of contrast, or if you prefer, of dubious compatibility, both with respect to basic and inalienable needs of a religious and pastoral nature, and with respect to the Italian legislation on churches open to public worship, which protects the primary finalization of sacred buildings to cultic needs.”

The result, according to Romano and colleagues, would have been a musealization of Lecce’s sacred buildings, in apparent contrast to the CEI’s pastoral note L’accesso nelle chiese, in which the Italian bishops have called the dioceses to observe the principle of free and unrestricted access in churches open for worship, so that of the same is emphasized “the primary and constitutive destination for liturgical and individual prayer.” In fact, the Lecce curia’s initiative provided for payment for everyone (exempted only residents of the Lecce diocese), and altars reserved for prayer had been set up for the faithful.

However, the obligation to pay was not continuous: it had been limited to the period May 13-October 31, 2019, a period during which the churches had been open daily from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. (during the rest of the year, Lecce’s churches can be visited from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., without payment of a ticket). The ticket was only for access to the complex (so it did not include guided tour services, audioguides or the like, which must be purchased separately), and it covered four sites: the cathedral of Santissima Maria Assunta, the basilica of Santa Croce, the church of San Matteo and the church of Santa Chiara. Again, the curia had imposed the blocking of tourist visits during religious services, informing tourists through a special calendar of liturgical celebrations posted on the website.

It is worth noting that the case of Lecce is profoundly different from that of other places where entry to churches is subject to the payment of a ticket, as in the case, for example, of the cathedrals of Pisa and Siena: in these cities the management of some monumental sites is in fact delegated to the fabbricerie, very ancient structures to which the state recognizes autonomous juridical personality (these are therefore entities that also enjoy financial autonomy and with the proceeds of ticketing finance the maintenance of the sites: in Italy there are a total of about 20 of them and they receive no public contribution). In Lecce, by contrast, the churches are owned by the diocese, which has entrusted the ticketing to a concessionaire. But for the diocesan churches, maintenance is subsidized with funds from the 8 per thousand to the Catholic Church, and under the current inteste, funds for extraordinary maintenance come from the state instead.

The Lecce curia had explained that the introduction of the fee was to be able to guarantee the continuous opening of the sites for twelve hours a day, as well as to maintain the expenses of keeping them open and in good condition. Romano and the other signers of the question, however, had objected, letting it be known that “a valid alternative to the introduction of the generalized ticket could be to provide for a limited number of daily paid visits, with limited entrance and accompaniment by guides, outside the opening hours of the church established by the rector (leaving, at other times, free entrance for all).” In this way, the senators continued, “there would be no overlap between cultic and cultural needs. Tourists themselves would be more free to visit sacred spaces, without having to worry about not inconveniencing the faithful and, at the same time, some form of income would be derived from the exploitation in tourist terms of the church property, in any case useful for the multiple needs related to its management and preservation (without, however, harming the right of the faithful to freely attend churches because of their primary and constitutive destination).”

Orrico, in his response, premised that churches can safely charge a fee, albeit with some important distinctions: “from a strictly legal point of view,” he wrote, “free access for tourist purposes to places of worship does not constitute a demandable right with regard to those responsible for their management, since only the right of the faithful to participate in liturgical services (canon 1221) and the exercise of piety is protected. It is, on the other hand, left to those responsible for the management of individual churches to regulate the discipline of access for different uses, thus providing that entrance may also not be free for tourist-cultural purposes, without this resulting in an impairment of the right of access of the faithful.”

What cannot be done, however, is to turn the church into a museum: “it should also be noted,” Orrico explains, “that the obligation to pay a ticket for access to sacred buildings presents profiles that are in conflict with the criterion of integral destination and openness to public worship that Italian law considers a prerequisite for a property to qualify as a building intended for the public exercise of Catholic worship, recognizing a peculiar legal regime closely related to the satisfaction of the spiritual needs of the population.”

“The guarantee of free entry to places of worship for all citizens, beyond their status as tourists or faithful,” the undersecretary continued, "seems, moreover, to emerge even in the CEI’s most recent guidelines. Already in the 2003 note I turisti nelle chiese. A generous and intelligent welcome, the principle of free admission to places of worship is generally reiterated, to protect their primary destination, limiting the possibility of introducing a ticket only in very exceptional cases, on a temporary basis, after careful evaluation, and in any case with the exclusion of cathedral churches. Among the elements subject to discretionary evaluation is the possibility of offering, in exchange for the payment of a ticket, opening hours that are more extended than the ordinary, guaranteeing both the primary function of worship (and thus the needs of the faithful) and the availability of a broader tourist-cultural offer, as in the case under consideration. Most recently, in 2012, the permanent episcopal council of the Italian Episcopal Conference issued a pastoral note, having only guideline value and therefore not legally binding, entitled L’accesso nelle chiese (Access in churches), in which it reiterates that, given the primary and constitutive destination of churches for liturgical and individual prayer, all those who wish to enter them to pray, to pause in silence, and to admire works of art are welcome guests."

Finally, Orrico concludes, “free and free entrance should be the rule, which can be derogated in exceptional cases, while always guaranteeing the possibility of free access to those who intend to go to church to pray and to residents of the municipal territory. The rationale, reiterated once again, appears to be to consider as prevailing the cultic purpose over the cultural-tourist one, circumscribing the possibility of removing the building from the free use of the community to limited and justified exceptions.”

In the photo: the basilica of Santa Croce in Lecce

Paid churches? For MiBACT, no: free admission should be the rule

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