Forty-nine members of staff at the Vatican Museums in Rome have launched legal action against the administration of Pope Francis over what they describe as “unfair and poor conditions” in the workplace.
In what is the first ever class action against the Vatican, employees involved also highlight health and safety issues at the museums, claiming, for example, that “between 25,000 and 30,000 people pass through the Vatican Museums daily, despite the maximum entry limit being indicated at 24,000 per day.” Vatican Museums was contacted for comment.
According to Reuters, the workers, mostly museum attendants, have sent a petition to the Vatican’s Governatorato, the body that administers the Vatican City State, denouncing “labour conditions that undermine each worker’s dignity and health”. The lawyer representing the group, Laura Sgrò, confirmed the petition had been sent.
Sgrò claims also that workers who had to stay at home during the Covid-19 pandemic, when the Vatican Museums were forced to close, were now being asked to hand back salaries paid during that period.
According to the Italian newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, the Vatican’s directorate of museums and cultural heritage, issued a “notice of hours debt” in October 2021 for employees who were forced to stay at home during the pandemic, which resulted in each of them having “a negative amount of hours… to repay it, a sum is withheld from the paycheck until the debt is exhausted”.
Crucially, according to Il Corriere della Sera, the legal case also “raises doubts about the safety of one of the most important and visited cultural institutions in the world”. The list of grievances is long, from the emergency exits (“just two accessible”) to the “rooms without air conditioning”, which in summer cause “serious illnesses”, while also putting the “conservation of the works” at risk.
Under Vatican law, the case can first be settled through a conciliation process but if this procedure fails, the case could go to court. The 49 workers, out of a total of around 700 people employed at the Vatican Museums, are all Italian citizens.
