Clear view for Vatican

by Viviane Hewitt in Rome THE Vatican has been "absolved" from charges that its new hostel for clergy is unlawfully blocking the city's best view of the dome of St Peter's.
The Paris-based United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) ruled this week that the Vatican is not guilty in a legal dispute that threatened the new Santa Marta hostel for clergy visiting the Vatican .
Rome environmentalists, who succeeded in forcing the Holy See to remove scaffolding on the "other side of the Vatican walls in Italian territory", had taken their protest to UNESCO's world heritage commission.
The protesters claimed that the hostel would have obstructed a view of Michelangelo's masterpiece dome and would have "caused irreparable damage to Rome's urban landscape" But UNESCO decided there was no case to answer. And after making "on-site examinations", the heritage organisation, International Council on Monuments and Sites, backed up the ruling that the claims were "unfounded".