Looks like religion and technology have collided again in Italy. Italians – and indeed many Catholics around the world – are known for carrying small pictures (called santini) of saints in their wallets. That may be a thing of the past sometime soon as Reuters reports that a new Web site, santiprotettori.com is now offering to send one of a catalogue of 15 photos of saints right to your cell phone for a cost of three euros.
“It is a distortion of sacred things … selling ‘santini’ for cell phones is horrifying,” Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceschi told the newspaper La Stampa. “We are merely catching up with the times. I think this will appeal to young people as well as grandmothers,” the Web site’s founder contends.
