A CHRISTMAS UNIQUE IN THE VATICAN
Festivities often unpublished, sometimes restricted, even leaden. It was Christmas Eve like no other. And especially in the Vatican. Pope Francis, who is the head of 1.3 billion Catholics in the world, celebrated Mass on Christmas Eve in the gigantic St. Peter’s Basilica in the presence of less than 200 faithful wearing protective masks, mostly employees of the tiny Vatican State. The schedule had been brought forward by two hours, at 7:30 p.m. local time, to accommodate the curfew in force in Italy, which begins at 10 p.m.
Before the pandemic, several thousand believers and tourists had obtained a precious ticket to attend this papal mass.
Thursday evening, the Place Saint-Pierre, illuminated by its monumental Christmas tree, was completely deserted and crossed by a police car. The Italians indeed began Thursday a containment for the holidays, in the country most affected in Europe by the virus, with nearly 71,000 dead and more than two million people infected since the start of the pandemic.
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