Castel Gandolfo: Country estate
with an agribusiness that also provides
the Pope with food and flowers yearlong
Translated from the Italian service of
July 24, 2012
The need to save on household expenses as well as the desirability of organic foods for the table are complementary practices in the Pope's summer residence at Castel Gandolfo.
As Italy and the rest of Europe are cowering at the persistent and worsening financial crisis, Benedict XVI is obviously not oblivious to the widespread public concern while he is at his 'beautiful retreat' at the pontifical villas where he spends the summer. The crisis is bound to affect his summer, occupied this time with working on his third volume on JESUS OF NAZARETH, the texts for his trip to Lebanon in September, and those for the coming Synodal Assembly of the New Evangelization and the opening of the Year of Faith in October.
Sources at Castel Gandolfo say that during the Pope's long afternoon walks through the gardens of the Villa del Moro, Villa Cybo and Villa Barberini - one of his indulgences while in Castel Gandolfo - he often ends up at the pontifical 'farm' which Pius XI set up around 1929, once the Lateran Pacts had regularised the political status of the Vatican.
Since then, this thriving enterprise has provided the papal household with homegrown organic produce as well as meat, dairy products and eggs. In recent days, he has watched with interest the harvesting of plums from the extensive orchard. Agricultural production is ample here, and the crops are numerous.
He has also been visiting the area that houses the cows and chickens all raised 'free range', and the center of the agribusiness that provides the papal household, as well as the Vatican supermarket, with milk, eggs, honey, fruits and vegetables throughout the year, allowing the Pope the benefit of fresh organic nourishment, using entirely 'in-house' resources. Consider that the papal farm produces 200 eggs a day and 50 liters of milk.
Castel Gandolfo has greenhouses, a huge arboreal patrimony, farms, plantations, farm animals, and even beehives. The director of the Pontifical Villas, Saverio Petrillo, supervises the work and harvesting of the papal villas' floral, agricultural and animal products.
All this must be pleasing to the Pope who has always advocated the sustainable utilization of natural resources. And a self-sufficiency that is, in itself, a message in this time of crisis.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 25/07/2012 14:18]