Many churches had suspended the tradition of keeping holy water in open fonts into which people dipped their hands following the outbreak of the H1N1 virus.
But an Italian inventor has combined faith and ingenuity to create the electronic terracotta dispenser, which is now being used in the northern town of Fornaci di Briosco. It functions like an automatic soap dispenser in public lavatories - a churchgoer waves his or her hand under a sensor and the machine spurts out holy water.