People are expected to be on their best behavior in church. Father Michele Madonna wishes his flock would understand that that means cell phones and tablets ought to be turned off for the duration of the service.

But asking nicely didn’t work, and neither did prayer (God wasn’t taking messages). So to enforce his in-church ban on mobile devices, the priest bought a jammer.

A Catholic priest says the only calls to be heard during Mass should be from God — so he has installed a jamming device in his Italian church to stop the congregation talking on their cells. Father Michele Madonna forked out the cash to install the gadget inside the Santa Maria a Montesanto chapel in downtown Naples, reports Ansa. He said he was fed up with the constant ringing and beeping of phones during his sermons.

Bliss is still hard to come by, however.

[H]e’s now facing a backlash from furious shop owners, who say the jammer is blocking contact credit card machines in their stores. “We have problems with debit cards, which go haywire, as do tablets and cellular phones,” one business owner told Ansa. Madonna, however, insisted the digital mishaps weren’t down to his device, [saying] “It works exclusively within the 40 square meters of the church.”

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