Pope on vacation in the Italian Dolomites

(July 9, 2007) Pope Benedict XVI on Monday began his summer vacation, flying off to the hills of northeast Italy where he will pass some quiet time in the private till July 27. The Holy Father and his staff boarded a plane on Monday morning, from Rome’s Ciampino airport to Treviso–Istrana airport, and from there by helicopter to Lorenzago di Cadore in the Italian region of Veneto in the Dolomites, a section of the Alps. The house where he is lodging is the same where his predecessor, Pope John Paul II, had stayed on six occasions between 1987 and 1998. Pope Benedict had spent the first two vacations of his pontificate in 2005 and ’06 in the northwestern Italian Alpine resort of Les Combes, in the Aosta Valley, where Pope John Paul II had been at least ten times. During his July 9-27 vacation Pope Benedict will not hold his Wednesday general audiences on July 11, 18 and 25. However he will deliver his traditional Sunday Angelus prayer and address on 15t and 22^nd July locally in the region. At the conclusion of his vacation on July 27, the Pope will resume his normal summer schedule at the summer papal residence of Castel Gandolfo, just south of Rome, holding his next general audience on Aug. 1.