Vatican Radio officials convicted

A Roman Catholic cardinal who used to run Vatican Radio has been found guilty of polluting the atmosphere with electromagnetic waves from a radio transmission station.

Cardinal Roberto Tucci, who headed the Vatican Radio's management committee, and the station's director-general, Father Pasquale Borgomeo, were given 10-day suspended sentences and ordered to pay damages in the case, Italian court officials said.

The case sprang from a medical report released in 2001 by a public health agency that showed unusually high numbers of people living near a forest of Vatican Radio antennas to the north of Rome had contracted or died from leukaemia.