Castel Gandolfo, Italy – Pope Leo XIV arrived in the Papal Gandolfo Papal Summer Retirement on Sunday to start a six -week vacation, restoring the city at the top of the hill his most illustrious resident after Pope Francis remained away during his 12 -year pontificate.
Leo welcomed sympathizers who bordered the main road in town to welcome him before signaling the villa’s balcony where he will remain for what he says will be a “brief period of rest”.
“I hope everyone can have a vacation to restore body and mind,” said Leo before leaving the Vatican during his prayer at noon on Sunday.
The 69 -year -old Chicago native takes over the papal tradition to leave the Vatican during the hot summer months in favor of relatively cooler climates of Castel Gandolfo, overlooking Lake Alban in the hills south of Rome. The region is a favorite getaway for Roman leaders since the time of the Emperor Domitian in the first century.
It is Leo’s first break after a few frantic weeks of inaugural audiences, outings and celebrations of the holy year after its elections of May 8 as the first American pope in history. He will have a handful of public events on vacation – masses, Sunday noon prayers and even some events in the Vatican – but the managers expect him to use time to rest, reflect and read on key issues that his new pontificate is confronted.
“Since he was elected, he has worked, has worked, has been working, it is time for him to get more energy and get his mission,” said Sister Mary Livia, a nun in Uganda who was on site to welcome Leo on Sunday.
Pope Urban VIII built the Papal Palace at Castel Gandolfo in 1624 to give the popes an escape from Rome. It was extended to the successive pontificats for its current size of 55 hectares (136 acres), larger than the city of the Vatican itself. In the field are a farm in activity, maintained gardens, an observatory led by Jesuit astronomers and, more recently, an environmental educational center inspired by the 2015 encyclical of Francis, Laudato Si (rented by being).
The old popes used it regularly in summer, attracting huge crowds of pilgrims who would come on Sunday to hear its midday blessing, which was delivered in the interior courtyard of the palace. Pope Benoît XVI closed his papacy in the field on February 28, 2013. But Francis, a house that never took a suitable vacation during his 12 -year -old pontificate, decided to stay in Rome in summer.
The city has undergone an economic first blow of the decision. But Francis transformed the Papal Palace and the gardens into a museum all year round, open to the public, giving the city a tourist print all year round which ended up enjoying even more, according to the merchants.
“It has made it possible to access these structures, which no pope has never done in 400 years,” said Simone Mariani, who runs a restaurant in town who took advantage of the constant flow of tourists much more than Sunday crowds only from the past. “He brought tourism that was good for the whole city.”
But that still does not compensate for the abandonment felt by a city whose rhythms for generations revolved around regular papal visits.
Whenever the Pope arrived, the palaces doors would open, the Swiss guards would be held to be attention and the city would come to life, said Patrizia Gasperini, whose family runs a souvenir shop on the main piazza a few steps from the front door of the palace.
“All year round, we miss the color, the movement, but we knew that when summer came, it would come back,” she said. “Thus, when Pope Francis decided not to come, we were upset at an emotional level, beyond the economic level.”
Since the palace was transformed into a museum, Leo will in fact remain in the Villa Barberini, a smaller residence on the ground which was previously where the Secretary of State of the Vatican would remain when the Pope was in town.
Mayor Alberto de Angelis said he hoped that Leo would decide to use Castel Gandolfo not only for summer breaks, but for periodic holidays for the rest of the year, as Saint-Jean-Paul II has often done.
There is also a tradition of popes using their time in Castel Gandolfo to write important church documents and encyclicals, and Angelis said that he hoped that Leo was following this tradition.
“We hope that Pope Leo produces text, an encyclical here that has a world scope,” he said. “And then he can say that he came from Castel Gandolfo, that he was inspired and produced this text from here for the whole world.”
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Winfield has reported to Rome.
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