On the way into Rome from where we live, on the far side of the Lago di Bracciano, you pass by a carefully maintained, 1,000 acre walled estate. Unlike other tenute (estates) around us, there is no secret about who owns this one or about what use is made of the land therein.
Fifty huge Vatican Radio transmitters planted across the estate are visible not just from the roadside but from miles around. Tall and ugly, these huge steel constructions look like objects from a bygone age, prior to the era of micro-chips and dotcom technology.
Often, passing by this "plantation" of radio antennae, one would speculate on the possible negative health implications of so many seemingly powerful transmitters, all parked together and all part of Vatican Radio's impressive, thoroughly professional, 40-language, short-wave World Service.
Over the last three years, Agnese Amadio, who lives close to the antennae, has had the same negative thoughts. In her case, however, her mind has been painfully and tragically concentrated by the death from leukemia last April of her 10-year-old daughter, Giulia.
Agnese Amadio is a member of one of several local citizens' committees which have tried to bring a case against the Vatican, alleging serious health damage due to electromagnetic pollution prompted by the transmitters. Eleven months after an investigation into the transmitting station was opened, the case came to court in Rome on Monday, only to be immediately postponed on a technicality until next September.
The case brought by state prosecutor Gianfranco Amendola was postponed for a reason all too familiar to Vatican-watchers, namely the issue of the Vatican's extraterritorial status as defined under the 1929 Concordat between the Holy See and Italy.
From the beginning of this investigation, the Vatican has argued that it does not recognise Italian jurisdiction, implying that its transmitters at Santa Maria di Galeria, north of Rome, are de jure part of Vatican territory. This, of course, was the argument used to ensure that Archbishop Paul Marcinkus would not have to stand trial in an Italian court in relation to the role of the Vatican Bank, directed by him, in the 1982 downfall of the Banco Ambrosiano.
On Monday, Vatican Radio's director of Italian programmes, Father Federico Lombardi, issued a statement that appeared to play down the possible health implications of the transmitter stations, saying: "It is contrary to morality to form unjust accusations and, without foundation, create serious alarm amongst the population".
Local citizens, inevitably, see things very differently. They point to a recently released study by the Lazio region's Agency for Public Health which concludes that the risk of children contracting leukemia is six times higher in the area close to the transmitters than in the city of Rome.
Another earlier study, by the Osservatorio Epidemiologico of Lazio, came to a similar conclusion when stating that incidence of death through leukemia within a three-kilometre radius of the Vatican Radio station was "significantly higher than expected".
Clearly, this is a complex case dealing with an area in which conclusive scientific and medical evidence may not be available for many years. However, the citizens' committees intend to pursue their case, firstly through the presentation of a dossier to the EU Environment Commissioner, Margot Wallstrom, and then through the reconvened court case next September - if and when the arguments about extra-territorial status can be resolved.
In this latter regard, it is significant that the Italian Foreign Office, in a note of March 20th last year, appeared to confirm the Vatican interpretation of the Concordat, saying that the Vatican's arguments about the extraterritorial status of Santa Maria di Galeria are "pertinent and correct".
Equally significantly, the Environment Minister, Mr Walter Bordon, on Monday said that he too would be a plaintiff in the case against the Vatican next September.
Whatever the merits of this particular case, the Vatican Radio inquiry has once more highlighted something that the naked eye seems to tell you when travelling through Italy. Namely, that Italy has more radio and television transmitters than anywhere in the world (60,000 by comparison with 12,000 in the entire US) not to mention a further 1,200 km of now illegal long-distance power lines.
New legislation relative to both radio transmitters (dating from 1998 and regulating their output) and to electricity lines (passed on February 4th this year and calling for illegal lines and relay stations to be moved within the next 10 years) indicate a growing awareness of the electro-magnetic pollution problem. In the meantime, however, it is only natural to speculate about the negative impact of all the various cables, pylons and transmitters that besmirch the ill-regulated Italian landscape.