Pay to pray? Rome prices criticized ahead of major pilgrimage year

The Vatican City, Rome and Italy are likely to see a surge of visitors in 2025, a Catholic Church Jubilee Year.

The Italian capital, which encircles the Vatican and St Peter’s Basilica, is projected to host up to 35 million tourists and pilgrims - more than 10 times Rome’s population.

And just as 2023 and 2024 saw complaints about price hikes in Paris ahead of the recent Summer Olympic Games, Rome is facing accusations of gouging - and not from Italian cities vying with it for business or Whore-of-Babylon-shouting Protestants or even atheist and secularist cynics about religion.

Pilgrims and tourists are facing "shameless shakedowns," according to Elizabeth Lev, an expert on Christian art who runs tours of Rome’s Catholic shrines.

The price-gouging is being carried out at "Christendom’s oldest and most venerable basilicas," said Lev, who listed St. Peter’s, which is in the Vatican, and St. Mary Major, a 3.5km walk from St. Peter’s on the Esquiline, one of Rome’s 7 hills.

St. Mary Major overlooks another of Rome's expensive-to-access landmarks, the Colosseum, where entry fees start at €20, the same as the door price for the Vatican Museums.

Writing in The Catholic Thing, Lev slammed the introduction of a €1.50 entrance charge for any visitor to St. Peter's who is accompanied by a guide.

Although the fee is less than what a visitor would pay for a coffee or gelato in one of Rome's restaurants, the rule requires visitors to wait while the guide lines up for a ticket.

For more than a decade, the Vatican has obliged guests taking guided tours of St. Peter’s to wear headsets, a stipulation that has been criticized for forcing people to queue - sometimes for hours and in temperatures topping 30 degrees Celsius - to access the vast church.

Also accused of price-gouging are administrators of The Pantheon, a former Roman temple with a roof regarded as an engineering wonder, and those of St Mary Major, who were described as running a "racket" and a "pay to play" system by charging hefty fees for "early-bird" visits before the heat and surging numbers later in the day.

The practise of a jubilee dates to ancient Israel and the Old Testament. According to Pope Francis, a Jubilee Year means "the special gift of grace, characterized by the forgiveness of sins."