Another precedent set by Benedict XVI:
Tomorrow's General Audience will be held
at the main piazza of Castel Gandolfo
by GIACOMO GALEAZZI
Translated from
August 31, 2010
Tomorrow, for the first time, the Pope's General Audience will be held at the main square of Castel Gandolfo facing the Apostolic Palace where Benedict XVI has been spending the summer. This was confirmed by the Vatican Press Office.
Normally, for most of the summer, the Pope holds the General Audience in the inner courtyard of the Palace which can accommodate 2000 pilgrims at most. The audiences generally resume in St. Peter's Square after August, even if the Pope continues to reside in Castel Gandolfo for what's left of the summer. (The Pope 'commutes' to and from St. Peter's Square by helicopter.)
But the Prefecture of the Pontifical Household said it had received so far at least 5,000 requests for tickets to tomorrow's GA - too many for the interior courtyard in Castel Gandolfo but too few for St. Peter's Square. Hence, the compromise.
It would mean one less trip for the 83-year-old Pope, who is making a pastoral visit to Carpineto Romano on Sunday, Sept. 4, to honor Pope Leo XIII on the second centennial of his birth, and will be travelling to the United Kingdom on Sept. 16-19.
Carpineto is the hometown of Leo XIII who died in 1903 at age 93 as the oldest Pope in history. By coincidence, it was he who made John Henry Newman a cardinal, the man Benedict XVI will canonize in Birmingham on Sept. 19.