A 52-year-old Italian man set himself on fire in St.
Peter's Square in the Vatican yesterday and suffered serious burns, officials said.
The man entered the square with a bottle of petrol early in the morning, doused himself, and lit a flame.
A Jesuit priest passing by tried to put out the flames with his cape before police arrived with a fire extinguisher. Two policemen suffered slight burns to their hands and smoke inhalation.
The man, who was taken to hospital with serious burns on his torso, was carrying a note with his daughter's phone number on it. His reasons for setting himself alight were not known and the contents of the note were not disclosed.
Pope Francis was in his residence in another part of the Vatican at the time.
Meanwhile, the Vatican has hired two big international consulting firms to improve financial accounting procedures and streamline media operations in its latest bid to clean up often murky finances and improve efficiency by cutting through red tape.
Pope Francis has already set up three commissions to advise him on what to do with the troubled Vatican bank, how to reform the administration and to address sexual abuse of children, a scandal that tainted his predecessor Benedict XVI's incumbency.
The Vatican said yesterday it had hired KPMG to "align the accounting procedures of all departments of the Holy See to meet international standards".
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article