Pope Leo XIV Arrives at Castel Gandolfo for Six-Week Summer Retreat, Reviving a Papal Tradition

Pope Leo XIV drove into Castel Gandolfo on Sunday to begin a six-week vacation, and the town came out to meet him. Well-wishers lined the main road into the hilltop community south of Rome. The pope greeted them, then waved from the balcony of the villa where he will stay for what he calls a "brief period of rest." It is the first time in more than a decade that a pope has settled in for the summer here.

Before leaving the Vatican, Leo spoke during his noontime prayer and said he hoped everyone could have some vacation time to restore body and spirit. The 69-year-old Chicago native is the first American pope in history. He was elected May 8 and has spent the weeks since in a rush of inaugural audiences, outings and Holy Year celebrations. This is his first real break.

It will not be a total withdrawal. He has a handful of public events on the calendar, including Masses, Sunday noon prayers and some appearances back at the Vatican. Officials expect him mostly to rest, think, and read in on the major issues facing his new pontificate. Sister Mary Livia, a nun from Uganda who came to welcome him, put it simply: since his election, she said, he has been working constantly, and now he needs to regain energy and strength for his mission.

The place has a long pedigree. Roman rulers have escaped to the cooler hills overlooking Lake Alban since the time of Emperor Domitian in the first century. Pope Urban VIII built the papal palace in 1624, and later pontificates enlarged the estate to 55 hectares, or 136 acres, larger than Vatican City itself. It holds a working farm, manicured gardens, an observatory run by Jesuit astronomers, and an environmental education center inspired by Pope Francis's 2015 encyclical Laudato Si. Benedict XVI closed out his papacy there on Feb. 28, 2013.

Francis broke with the custom. A homebody who never took a proper vacation in his 12 years as pope, he stayed in Rome each summer. The town took an initial economic hit. Then Francis opened the palace and gardens as a year-round museum, and shopkeepers say the steady stream of visitors ended up helping the town even more than the Sunday crowds of the past. Simone Mariani, who runs a restaurant there, said Francis made the structures accessible in a way no pope had in 400 years, bringing tourism that was good for the whole town.

Still, the change left a mark that money did not repair. Patrizia Gasperini, whose family runs a souvenir shop on the main piazza steps from the palace door, described how the town used to come alive when a pope arrived: the palace doors opened, the Swiss Guards stood at attention. Through the year, she said, residents missed the color and movement but knew he would return in summer. When Francis decided not to come, the disappointment went beyond the economic level, she said.

Because the palace is now a museum, Leo is staying at the Villa Barberini, a smaller residence on the grounds that once housed the Vatican secretary of state when the pope was in town.

Mayor Alberto De Angelis has hopes beyond summer. He would like Leo to come for periodic stays during the rest of the year, as St. John Paul II often did. He also pointed to the tradition of popes drafting major church documents and encyclicals at Castel Gandolfo, and said he hopes Leo will produce a text with global reach that could be said to have been inspired there. Whether the new pope writes anything during these six weeks is not known; officials are expecting rest.