Italian Priest Installs Cellphone Jamming Device To Stop Calls During Service

A Catholic priest in Italy was so fed up with phones going off during Mass that he installed a cellphone jammer to block the signals.

"Phones were always going off during Mass and at other events like funerals which just wasn't on," a frustrated Father Michele Madonna, of Santa Maria di Montesanto church in Naples, said according to the U.K.'s Daily Mail.

Father Madonna has tried putting signs up asking the congregation to turn off cellphones, but in a society where people are increasingly addicted to their mobiles, that hasn't worked.

"What really annoyed me is that when it first started people would switch off their phones in embarrassment now they are cupping their hands over the receiver and carrying on talking," the priest said.

So he bought the $62 jammer and had an engineer install it after local police gave him their blessing.

"I bought the jammer from a local electrical store and asked the police if it was OK and they said it was," Father Madonna said according to the Daily Mail.

The priest said the jammer worked- perhaps a little too well. Now local business owners are seething because the device has blocked their card payment machines from working.

'It just doesn't work and I'm losing money. Others are in the same position," the unnamed owner of a nearby shop said, the newspaper reported.

"I understand how he feels but what about us? This is our busiest time of the year."

Father Madonna knows local shop owners are upset, but it was not immediately clear what he is going to do about the jammer.