Day 15 in Les Combes:
'Normal' last 2 days
of vacation for the Pope
Adapted and translated from
LES COMBES - "We expect today and tomorrow to be quiet, without any particular commitments," Fr. Federico Lombardi said today as the Pope's vacation winds down, ending Wednesday. "The Pope will dedicate himself as usual to prayer, study and reading."
Before he leaves Les Combes on Wednesday, he will meet in the morning with the local and state security forces, firemen and others who were assigned to insure his security during his holiday in Val D'Aosta.
"In the afternoon, a meeting with local authorities before leaving by helicopter around 5 p.m. for the airport at Torino-Caselle, from where he will fly back to Rome-Ciampino airport. He will proceed from the airport directly to Castel Gandolfo where he is expected in time for dinner".
Additionally, Fr. Lombardi also confirmed that Benedict XVI will be visiting Turin next spring when the Holy Shroud goes on public exposition on April 10-May 23, 2010.
Cardinal Poletto behind the Holy Father at the Angelus yesterday.
Lombardi said the Pope received an update on preparations for the exposition - which he authorized last year - from Cardinal Severino Poletto, Archbishop of Turin, who had lunch with the Pope yesterday after the Angelus. Also present was the Bishop of Aosta, Mons. Giuseppe Anfossi.
he Vatican press director said "The Pope ended the day yesterday with his usual evening walk, thus concluding a Sunday marked by a festive encounter with the faithful for the Angelus, and lunch with some guests, among them, Cardinal Poletto and Bishop Anfossi."
Background information on the Shroud
from Cindy Wooden
The last time the Shroud of Turin was displayed to the public was in 2000 for the jubilee year. The shroud is removed from a specially designed protective case only for very special spiritual occasions, and its removal for study or display to the public must be approved by the pope.
The shroud underwent major cleaning and restoration in 2002.
According to tradition, the 14-foot-by-4-foot linen cloth is the burial shroud of Jesus. The shroud has a full-length photonegative image of a man, front and back, bearing signs of wounds that correspond to the Gospel accounts of the torture Jesus endured in his passion and death.
The Church has never officially ruled on the shroud's authenticity, saying judgments about its age and origin belonged to scientific investigation. Scientists have debated its authenticity for decades, and studies have led to conflicting results.
A recent study by French scientist Thierry Castex has revealed that on the shroud are traces of words in Aramaic spelled with Hebrew letters.
A Vatican researcher, Barbara Frale, told Vatican Radio July 26 that her own studies suggest the letters on the shroud were written more than 1,800 years ago.
She said that in 1978 a Latin professor in Milan noticed Aramaic writing on the shroud and in 1989 scholars discovered Hebrew characters that probably were portions of the phrase "The king of the Jews."
Castex's recent discovery of the word "found" with another word next to it, which still has to be deciphered, "together may mean 'because found' or 'we found,'" she said.
What is interesting, she said, is that it recalls a passage in the Gospel of St. Luke, "We found this man misleading our people," which was what several Jewish leaders told Pontius Pilate when they asked him to condemn Jesus.
She said it would not be unusual for something to be written on a burial cloth in order to indicate the identity of the deceased.
Frale, who is a researcher at the Vatican Secret Archives, has written a new book on the shroud and the Knights Templar, the medieval crusading order which, she says, may have held secret custody of the Shroud of Turin during the 13th and 14th centuries.
She told Vatican Radio that she has studied the writings on the shroud in an effort to find out if the Knights had written them.
"When I analyzed these writings, I saw that they had nothing to do with the Templars because they were written at least 1,000 years before the Order of the Temple was founded" in the 12th century, she said.
Andrea Tornielli of Il Giornale had the good sense to ask someone in the Pope's household last week how exactly the Pope broke his wrist - the only one to do so at the time. Now, Fr. Lombardi describes it himself in an interview with SKY-TV, as reported by both ANSA and Apcom.
Fr. Lombardi explains:
Pope stumbled against the bed
while trying to get to light switch
LES COMBES (AOSTA), July 27 (Translated from ANSA) - In the middle of the night between Thursday and Friday last week, Pope Benedict got up from bed and tried to get to a light switch but stumbled on the foot of the bed.
That is how he fell on his right wrist and fractured it, according to Fr. Federico Lombardi, speaking to Sky TG-24.
"The Pope got up in a dark room, which is also very different from his bedroom in the Vatican," Lombardi says. "He moved about to get to the light awitch, stumbled across the foot of the bed, fell down and hurt himself."
Lombardi confirms that the Pope did not wake anyone up, "he did not call for help, and he did not do anything about the injury."
But in the morning, he adds, "he noticed the wrist was swollen and painful," despite which he went ahead, said Mass and had breakfast.
Afterwards, however, the doctor was called [Dr. Polisca, who is staying at one of the houses in the nearby Salesian colony] and he decided the Pope should be go to the hospital. The rest of the story is known to all."
Among the videos on Russi's site is a roundup of videoclips taken when the Holy Father left the hospital in Aosta on Friday the 17th. Towards the very end, one newscast showed a very brief clip of the Pope arriving in Les Combes (the car is driving up to the main entrance at the side of the house, below right):
and caught the two Memores housekeepers greeting him:
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 28/07/2009 01:54]