Here's an interesting little sidebar to the big story of yesterday, from John Thavis's blog on CNA...
Feline company in the Vatican
by John Thavis
May 2, 2013
It looks like Pope Benedict will be able to enjoy the company of cats in his retirement home inside the Vatican.
This curious photo, made available by the Vatican newspaper, shows a black-and-white spotted cat ranging through an area next to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery, where the retired Pope took up lodgings today.
The Vatican Gardens is said to have a number of stray cats roaming the grounds, and they will find a friend in the former Pope. As a cardinal, he famously fed the stray cats in the Borgo neighborhood where he lived, according to Vatican officials.
As Pope, we were told he never kept a house cat, but from was rumored to have fed the cats in the Vatican Gardens. Maybe this one is an old acquaintance.
In fact, around this time last year,I posted this cat story about one particular stray cat...
The final word on this:
No cats in B16's papal apartment ever
But he does have a new feline friend -
Chico of Pentling, meet Ciccio of the Vatican Gardens
by Paolo Rodari
Translated from
April 29, 2012
Joseph Ratzinger never had a house cat in Rome.
He didn't have one when he was the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and lived just outside the Vatican walls at Piazza della Citta Leonina.
Nor does he have one now that he occupies the papal apartments on the third floor of the Apostolic Palace.
That does not mean he does not love cats. His co-workers know his fondness for felines quite well, as do now those responsible for the care of fauna within the Vatican Gardens.
Prof. Klaus Friedrich and Giulia Artizzu, who work under the Secretary of the Vatican Governatorate, Mons. Gabriele Sciacca, have put up a little cat cottage in the Vatican Gardens for the use of a very special cat - Ciccio, formerly known to Vatican enployees as 'the Museum cat'.
Ciccio is a black male cat who is "very sociable and very sure of his own attractiveness", writes Artizzu in
All'ombra del cupolone {In the shadow of St. Peter's Dome), the informal organ of the Governatorate's employees.
Ciccio is well-known to all who frequent the Vatican Gardens, including Pope Benedict XVI who walks in the gardens every afternoon with one or both of his private secretaries, up to the grotto dedicated to the Madonna della Guardia (Patroness of Genoa) at the summit of the Gardens, and back to the Apostolic Palace.
Of course, there are other cats the Pope is likely to encounter during this walks in the Vatican's 'green lung' which hosts a variety of natural fauna - from parrots and hummingbirds to frogs, newts and glowworms.
But Ciccio is apparently the only one with the 'individual personality' to catch the attention of Garden habitues including its most famous one.
When Cardinal Ratzinger was elected Pope, it was Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, then Archbishop of Genoa but before that, #2 man to the future Pope at the CDF, who first spoke to the media about the new Pope's love for cats. He told
Famiglia Cristiana in an interview:
"During his years at CDF, Cardinal Ratzinger used to talk to the cats he met along the way. He would stop and say something to them in German, probably in the Bavarian dialect. He always had something with him to feed the cats, and they would follow him to the courtyard of the Palazzo del Sant'Uffizio."
These were the words which fed what has since been shown to be another Roman myth. Just like the stories that Paul VI brought his pet cat with him to the Apostolic Palace when he became Pope, or that Pius XII kept two goldfinches, so Benedict XVI was believed to have brought a beloved cat to the papal apartment.
Now we know for sure: there is no cat in Benedict XVI's papal household, although his great fondness for cats is very real.
Vatican sources say that a few weeks before the 2005 Conclave, Cardinal Ratzinger had given a cat as a gift to a cardinal friend to help him get over a depression.
But shortly after the Conclave, cat stories began proliferating about the new Pope. Chico, a marmalade-colored cat belonging to the Pope's next-door neighbors in Pentling outside Regensburg), caught the fantasy of newspapers around the world and became immortalized as 'the Pope's cat'.
Ingrid Stampa, for years Cardinal Ratzinger's housekeeper (now employed in the Secretariat of State for the translation of papal texts to German), almost immediately told newsmen, "We do have two cats - but both are porcelain". Part of her daily chores as housekeeper had been to descend to Borgo Pio and leave leftovers for the stray cats of the neighborhood.
Recently, one of the Pope's two private secretaries, Mons. Alfred Xuereb, 53, who has worked with the Pope since 2007, was interviewed about his days with Benedict XV, during which he spoke about the cat that the Pope never had.
"It is not true that we have a cat in the papal apartment, even if the Pope loves animals. It has been said that as a cardinal, he would stop on the streets to talk to cats. Someone reportedly asked him, 'Your Eminence, do you talk to the cats in Italian or in German?' And he answered, 'They don't understand languages, but they do understand your tone of voice'..."
In short, there is no cat in the papal apartment. But lately, there has been a privileged cat in the Vatican Gardens - Ciccio, for whom a little home has been built in the world's most exclusive address.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 03/05/2013 14:46]