<\/p>\n
The Vatican said Monday it would cut the phone signal within the tiny city state during the conclave to elect a new pope — but this would not affect St Peter’s Square.<\/p>\n
The office of the presidency of the Governorate of the Vatican City State said that “starting from 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) on May 7, all the transmission systems of the telecommunications signal for mobile telephones present in the territory of the Vatican City State… will be deactivated”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
“The signal will be restored after the announcement of the election of the supreme pontiff,” it said in a statement.<\/p>\n
But the deactivation will not cover St Peter’s Square, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni told reporters.<\/p>\n
Thousands of faithful are expected to gather in the square in front of St Peter’s Basilica to await the announcement of a successor to Pope Francis, who died on April 21.<\/p>\n
A total of 133 cardinals from across the globe will gather in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel on Wednesday to begin voting for a new head of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.<\/p>\n
The election is carried out in utmost secrecy and the cardinals will be required to leave their mobile phones behind when they enter the conclave, Bruni said.<\/p>\n
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)<\/i><\/p>\n
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Holy See: The Vatican said Monday it would cut the phone signal within the tiny city state during the conclave to elect a new pope — but this would not affect St Peter’s Square. The office of the presidency of the Governorate of the Vatican City State said that “starting from 3:00 pm (1300 GMT) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5106,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-5105","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5105"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5107,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5105\/revisions\/5107"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gunnewsusa.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}