c. 2004 Religion News Service

(UNDATED) He is the leader of the world’s more than 1 billion Catholics and lives in Renaissance splendor in a city-state of his own. But for his summer vacation, Pope John Paul II prefers a simple, two-story chalet in the Italian Alps.

For the 10th summer, the 84-year-old Roman Catholic pontiff flew to the Val d’Aosta in northwestern Italy near the French and Swiss borders to spend 12 days of almost complete rest at Les Combes in the town of Introd, population 568, altitude 4,000 feet.

The pope’s Alpine holiday ends Saturday (July 17) when he will return, tanned and rested, to Rome and take up residence until late September in his hilltop palace at Castelgandolfo, about 25 miles south of the Eternal City.

Castelgandolfo is a picturesque town in the scenic, wine-growing Alban Hills, but the Alps are a world apart for John Paul, recalling the Tatra Mountains of Poland where he hiked, skied and climbed as a young man. As he prepared to leave the Alps, he admitted that he will miss them.

“I know that you will be sad to leave all this beauty. I too am sad to leave this beauty because here you are truly touched by the hand of God,” he told aides Thursday as they visited a waterfall at an altitude of 5,500 feet with a view of Mont Blanc.

Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls, reporting the pope’s comment to Vatican Radio on Friday, said that John Paul was only “half-joking, perhaps not even that much.”

The spokesman said that the mountain holiday “was good for” the pope, who maintains a taxing, six-day-a-week work schedule at the Vatican although he is increasingly debilitated by Parkinson’s disease and arthritis.

At Les Combes, where his only public appearance was on Sunday to lead the Angelus prayer, the pope read, prayed, meditated and made daylong excursions in the mountains, despite encountering rain and a hailstorm.

His aides served him elaborate picnic lunches cooked at the chalet and warmed up on a portable gas stove. Sunday lunch, his main meal of the day, started with an antipasto of local smoked ham called speck and two local cheeses, fontina and toma, and proceeded through a vegetable puree with croutons, grilled filet of beef with sauteed chicory, a glass of white wine and a fruit tart.

“He rested, and he was able to go out every day. There were some days of rain, but the Holy Father loves nature, naturally, also with rain and wind,” Navarro-Valls said.

The pope returned to Les Combes after an absence of two years. In 2002 he was making a trip to Toronto for World Youth Day and to Mexico and Guatemala, and last year he apparently was too weak to travel in Europe’s exceptionally hot summer weather.

On this visit, for the first time, John Paul was virtually unable to walk, but Navarro-Valls said he made no complaints and appeared to thoroughly enjoy himself even though confined to a wheelchair.

“After only several days of vacation he is already better, both because of the climate that helps him to sleep and because of the lack of audiences and the Vatican pace,” the spokesman said early in the pope’s stay. As to John Paul’s incapacities, he said, “I have never heard him express regret over this. You know he rarely comments about himself.”

The papal residence at Les Combes is a house of wood and stone with a slate roof surrounded by towering fir trees and larches. For this year’s visit, the Salesian priests who are his hosts installed an elevator to take him to his bedroom and study on the upper floor and cleared a path through the woods for his wheelchair.

In addition to Navarro-Valls, the pope’s party included two close Polish friends, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who is his secretary, and Tadeuz Styczen, who succeeded him as professor of moral theology at the University of Lublin.

The pope was also accompanied by Polish nuns who act as housekeepers and cooks at the Apostolic Palace, and Camillo Cibin, commander of Vatican police. Local authorities deployed a 150-man security force including police, paramilitary Carabinieri and Finance Guards. Albert Cerise, a retired forestry official, planned the itineraries of the pope’s excursions and served as his guide.

John Paul first traveled to the Val d’Aosta area on a pastoral visit in the early 1980s, found it to his liking and returned for a summer holiday in 1989. Vatican officials also liked Les Combes because it is not a tourist center and has only two approach roads.

DEA/MO END POLK