Just as at Tirupati, Vatican Has a Dress Code

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VATICAN CITY, July 17, 2003: The famed temple of Tirupati in India, and others around the world, have instituted dress codes for devotees, and encountered protests in the process. This news report in the Detroit Times shows other religions, too, face the same problem of casually dressed people in their sacred places and have imposed strict dress codes as a solution. Excerpts from the report: “With temperatures soaring, tempers are flaring as the Vatican’s dress police turn back tourists in shorts and bare shoulders trying to get into St. Peter’s Basilica. Vendors are doing a brisk business selling paper pants and shirts — turning St. Peter’s Square into an open-air changing room. Enforcement of the Vatican dress code turns into a battle each summer, but the verbal skirmishes have been heightened this July because Rome is in the grips of a relentless heat wave. At the Vatican, authorities have erected signs showing no one can enter the basilica with bare legs and bare shoulders. Guards — neatly dressed in shirts and ties — patrol the entrances. Not only the Vatican, but the diocese of Rome and its hundreds of churches require what authorities consider appropriate dress. Some tourists do come prepared, pulling out pants and shirts from their backpacks and changing in St. Peter’s Square.”