Photos: Inappropriate advertisements help finance Church upkeep in Italy

Reader Joe writes:

My daughter just returned from a semester in Rome. She was with a group of students and seminarians, mostly from Saint Thomas University in Minnesota, all of whom enjoy your website. She shared some of your humorous captions with me, so I thought you might like to see a couple of photos that I took recently in Milan.

The first place I went was the famous Gothic cathedral. You can imagine how shocking it was to find large (40-50 foot) billboards plastered on the sides of the cathedral! One of them reminded me of a 'B' rated sci-fi movie from the 1950's-the Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman. Apparently, in Italy, many churches are actually owned and maintained by the government with the stipulation that the faithful can continue to worship at these sites. Scaffolding space is rented out to advertisers when renovations are underway. That is because the Church can't afford to maintain all of the priceless artwork and architecture.

I couldn't agree more with this gentleman's reaction. When I was in Milan several years ago to see the Milan Cathedral, these advertisements were not in place. I do remember, however, often seeing inappropriate advertisements featured to the scaffolding at other Catholic Churches in Italy (and Austria).

I wonder if these Churches could think up some sort of workaround. For instance: how about starting a fund to buy out the advertisement space with Catholic ads? Parishioners and tourists could add money to this fund, which would enable Catholic outfits to compete against the mainstream promoters. I'd have gladly donated a couple euros to such a fund when I was visiting.

Anyway, it's the first solution that came to mind. What do you think?