Italian police officers arrested on Sunday morning, hours before the Angelus prayer, a priest dressed in a cassock at one of the entrances to St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican armed with a compressed air pistol, two knives, a cutter and a screwdriver.
As reported by the Italian newspaper La Repubblica, the 59-year-old priest from the Czech Republic, Milan Palkovic, was carrying the weapons stored in a bag and justified himself to the police by claiming that he was carrying someone else’s bag and that the weapons were for Self Defense.
Palkovic has been charged with illegal possession of weapons. In addition, the owner of the bag, a 60-year-old Czech man, has also been arrested. Neither of them had a criminal record. Both had arrived in Rome on a pilgrimage from the Czech Republic by bus.
