Tourists Lack Church Etiquette

[Mulboyne]

Asahi:Church matters
This bastion of Catholicism in southern Japan has been jolted by the central government's decision in January to register a group of 20 Christian sites as a candidate for UNESCO World Heritage listing. Some priests are uncomfortable with the notion of an influx of badly behaved tourists...Acts of sacrilege include visitors extinguishing their cigarettes in holy water, taking photographs during Mass, trouping around during a funeral, drawing graffiti on the wall of a church, and littering...In response to concerns by the archdiocese about tourist manners, the prefectural government plans to hold seminars on this and other issues. It has already earmarked about 8 million yen in its fiscal 2007 budget for this program...more...