Call Centre Information Site.
Italy's Roman Catholics, unable to take
out time from their busy schedules to go to church, are being offered a
contact centre that will pray for them.
Manned by a team of 200 volunteers, the contact centre is run by Father
Alberto Pacini at the Sant'Anastasia al Palatino Church in Rome, and has
been dubbed "Call Centre of the Faithful". Father Pacini said the idea for
the contact centre came about due to the desire to make "the possibility
of prayer" available to those who could not go to church for some reason
or the other.
The volunteer agents work on a rotation basis, staffing the centre from
9am until 11pm. People who call after 11pm are greeted by an answering
machine, with all messages passed on to a group who prays for them. "In
this age of mass media and internet I suppose you could say that it is a
sign of the times, but if it helps people to come closer to God then it
can't be bad," Father Pacini said.