A matter of perspective
I am sure there will always be sanctimonious souls who would fault Benedict XVI (
but not John Paul II, Paul VI, John XXIII, Pius XII and earlier popes) for having used the Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo unfailingly - during the eight summers that he was pope, as well as for shorter visits to recharge himself after the strenuous papal activities in Holy Week culminating in Easter, and of course, his first two months after his retirement as pope, and even for two weeks that first summer of his retirement.
I have used an old banner from 2013 to illustrate an era of four centuries which ended yesterday when the entire Apostolic Palace in Castel Gandolfo, including what used to be the Pope's private rooms, became a revenue-earning museum for the Bergoglio Pontificate.
And to give some perspective to the exaggerated and patently false descriptions used in the media to describe the papal rooms in CG, I first post pictures provided to the world in Sept 2014 when National Geographic dedicated an entire issue to a breathless hagiography of the then still-new pope.
PAPA BERGOGLIO'S 3-ROOM PERSONAL SUITE AT CASA SANTA MARTA
From National Geographic Magazine's Sept. 2014 reportage
Bedroom, sitting room and study.
The rooms given to the pope probably correspond to the equivalent of the royal suite or presidential suite - and properly so - in Casa Santa Marta, a four-star hotel. But one can be almost sure that the new pope, at the time, may have insisted to stay in the same one-person bedroom he occupied as a cardinal elector, but security and practical considerations made that a non-starter.
Also, he may since have replaced the hotel bed with a basic hospital bed or even an army cot (with a good mattress because of his arthritis/sciatica problems, for which reason he would not be using even simpler sleeping arrangements like a futon or a sleeping bag), but if he did, we would probably have photos of that by now.
Beatrice lifted the following photos from a publication on Castel Gandolfo by the Fondazione Vaticana Joseph Ratzinger-Benedetto XVI. They speak for themselves:
Do not forget how AFP reported the makeover of the Apostolic Residence in CG into a revenue-earning museum:
Pope Francis has definitively renounced the splendors of his summer palace in Castel Gandolfo, 25 km southeast of Rome, by opening its private rooms to tourists, the Vatican announced Friday.
The Argentine pope, champion of simplicity, had already rejected from the start the sumptuous papal apartment in the Vatican's Apostolic Palace, preferring to occupy three rooms of a residence in the little city state....
What does it say of media reporting today when the world's second largest news agency can perpetrate urban myths with the strategic use of a couple of words that are patently overwrought and simply wrong?
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P.S. Something else that none of the Vaticanistas ever brought up - when the whole world was intoning Hallelujah and Hosannah to the glories of the humblest pope there ever was, for refusing to live in the papal apartment of the Vatican Apostolic Palace: Benedict XVI himself lived in Casa Santa Marta for three months following his election (April to mid-July) until he went to Les Combes for his first two-week summer vacation as Pope and then to Castel Gandolfo in August and September. He did not move in to the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican until he returned from Castel Gandolfo in October - because in the meantime, the papal apartment had to be renovated for normal use from the necessary adaptations made to it in the final years of John Paul II, when it had to serve also as a medical facility, including an ICU for immediate emergency care. Not that B16, or the media, made any big deal out of it, because it was truly no big deal....
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/10/2016 04:45]