Catholic Church: Holy Steam!

A day ahead of the papal conclave, faces at the scandal-struck Vatican were even redder than usual after it emerged that the Holy See had purchased a €23 million (£21 million) share of a Rome apartment block that houses Europe’s biggest gay sauna.

The senior Vatican figure sweating the most due to the unlikely proximity of the gay Europa Multiclub is probably Cardinal Ivan Dias, the head of the Congregation for Evangelisation of Peoples, who is due to participate in tomorrow’s election at the Sistine Chapel. 

This 76-year-old “prince of the church” enjoys a 12-room apartment on the first-floor of the imposing palazzo, at 2 Via Carducci, just yards from the ground floor entrance to the steamy flesh pot. There are 18 other Vatican apartments in the block, many of which house priests...

This story in The Independent yesterday - based on one in La Repubblica - has caused much hilarity.
Quite right, too.
But apart from giving us all a good snigger, it's not much of a story, really - the block must be huge, judging by the alleged price of just a share of it.
[Edit: Apparently it's a palazzo - a by definition huge (ie palatial) building - there's a photo of its extremely grand frontage on this Repubblica article].
Is there anything in central Rome that isn't "a bit near" to where a priest lives? 

PS Gay Star News reported this as 'Vatican spends €23m to buy ‘Europe's largest gay sauna’'.
Erm, they haven't bought the sauna, you idiot.
(I'm also not sure it's "Europe's largest" - my Italian's not up to much, but I think their website just says it's "Italy's number one").
This really does take a special kind of stupid.
Well done!

PPS Image from a promo video for Europa Multiclub. [Edit: Set to private Wednesday morning - odd, you'd think EMC would be milking the publicity instead of going all coy].