French airport authorities tell Vatican Airlines passengers they can't take "holy water" onboard.If its over the allowed amount, that is.
If it is more than more than 100 milliliters, even a bottle of “holy water” will not be allowed in carry-on luggage, as passengers of Vatican Airlines’ inaugural service from France to Rome have learned.
According to published reports, Italian television personality Paola Saluzzi was told by security officials at France’s Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees International Airport on Wednesday to hand over a can of water, which she had collected from her visit at Our Lady of Lourdes Cathedral.
Other pilgrims were ordered to do the same, even after protesting that they had waited long queues to fill up their bottles with “holy water.”
International regulations prohibiting air travelers from carrying containers with more than 100 milliliters of liquid onboard were implemented in 2006 after British authorities foiled a plan to blow up US-bound flights out of London's Heathrow airport using liquid explosives.
"All passengers are obliged to respect the rules and not go over the quantities (of liquid) permitted on flights,” Franck Hourcade, an official at the Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrenees International Airport, was quoted as saying.
An official from Mistral Air, which operates the world’s first airline for Catholic pilgrims, told reporters: "There are international rules that state that liquids cannot be carried on board. These have to be respected.”
The Catholic pilgrims were on their return trip to Rome’s Fiumicino airport.
The Vatican airline is aiming to serve 150,000 pilgrims a year on its chartered Boeing 737 to destinations including Fatima, Portugal; Santiago de Compostela, Spain; the Holy Land; Czestochowa, Poland; and Sinai, Egypt.
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