Paris, France - A practice by mobile telephone companies of sticking cellular relay antennae on top of church belltowers in France has been hit with the fury of the Catholic faithful, who have taken legal action to have the devices removed.
The antennae violate a 1905 law on the separation of church and state that limits churches to being places of worship, not commercial ventures, the lawyer, Richard Forget, argued to AFP.
He said he represented several devout Catholics, and that they were also concerned that "an antenna can be used to allow pornography to be sent via broadband Internet connections."
He said his clients included Marc Cendrier, who belongs to an association opposing the erection of antennae on buildings, and an actor, Rufus.
France has some 35,000 churches, all of which are owned by the municipality in which they are located. In many towns and villages they are often the highest building.
According to the AFOM, an association of France's mobile telephone operators, 703 of the churches have relay antennae. There are a total of 37,000 such antennae spread across the country.
The lawsuit targets France's three mobile operators, France Telecom's Orange, SFR, and Bouygues Telecom, and the municipalities of five towns in different regions of France.
A court in the western Paris suburb of Nanterre began studying four of the cases Wednesday and were expected to rule on July 4, while a fifth case was to be heard in a central Paris court starting June 30.
A spokesman for SFR said: "Putting an antenna on a belltower has never prevented the normal exercise of worship and, in any case, we have always had the express permission from the diocesan association."
The Conference of Bishops in France stressed that vicars were responsible for managing the churches and that any money raised from the antennae would go directly to the parish.