A German woman has failed in a court bid to prevent the Vatican building its new embassy in Berlin near her house. The judge said yesterday she must accept her new neighbours, who might some day include the Pope.
The woman, who was not named, said the planned four-storey nunciature would ruin the quiet atmosphere of the Neukolln area near the Johannes-Basilika, Berlin's biggest Catholic church. She said increased traffic and security measures would change the area and argued that the district hardly had any Catholics living there anyway.
But Judge Wolf-Rudiger von Hase himself paid a visit to the neighbourhood and rejected her arguments. He said: "Berliners must be ready to accept the changes that must accompany the move of the government from Bonn. Much is changing at the moment in Berlin. We are not in a sanatorium here."
A spokesman for the Vatican said local residents should not worry about increased traffic in the district. He said the embassy was
expecting to employ only 12 people and not have more than five or six visitors a day.
He also assured the woman, and the residents' group who supported her court case, that the outside of the building would be covered in greenery.
The Rev Nikolaus Timpe, a priest at the Johannes-Basilika, said he was pleased that the embassy would be going ahead.