{"id":10394,"date":"2013-09-15T07:02:57","date_gmt":"2013-09-15T07:02:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/pope-francis-to-drive-his-own-car-inside-vatican\/"},"modified":"2013-09-15T07:02:54","modified_gmt":"2013-09-15T07:02:54","slug":"pope-francis-to-drive-his-own-car-inside-vatican","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/pope-francis-to-drive-his-own-car-inside-vatican\/","title":{"rendered":"Pope Francis to Drive his own Car inside Vatican City"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/figure>\n

{{Pope Francis plans to drive around Vatican City at the wheel of a \u201cpopemobile\u201d that is a lot like him: frugal, clad in white, and with a fair bit of mileage.}}<\/p>\n

The 1984 Renault 4 economy car with 300,000 km (186,000 miles) on the clock was given to him by a 70-year-old priest from northern Italy, Father Renzo Zocca, who took the pope for a spin inside the walls of the tiny city-state.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the pope will drive it a bit himself inside the Vatican,\u201d the Holy See\u2019s deputy spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said on Thursday.<\/p>\n

After the pope appealed to priests several months ago not to drive expensive cars but to save money and give it to the poor, Zocca wrote him a letter saying he had used the same car for decades and wanted to give it to the pope as a symbolic gift.<\/p>\n

He brought it last weekend, along with some of his parishioners, to the Vatican, where the pope told him he knew how to drive it because he had had a Renault 4 in Argentina.<\/p>\n

The pope, 76, then got in and drove it, Zocca told the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family).<\/p>\n

Francis, who, as a cardinal in Buenos Aires, traveled by subway, has shown a predilection for simple means of transport even after his election in March as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.<\/p>\n

On the night of his election, he shunned the bulletproof papal Mercedes limousine and rode in a minibus with the cardinals who had chosen him to lead the Roman Catholic church.<\/p>\n

During his trip to Brazil in July he was driven around Rio de Janeiro in a small silver Fiat at his own request, and when he visited a refugee centre in Rome on Tuesday, he used a Ford Focus from the Vatican\u2019s car pool.<\/p>\n

Francis has shunned the spacious and luxurious papal apartments used by his predecessors and have opted to live in a small suite in a Vatican guesthouse.<\/p>\n

And while Francis will likely never need them in Rome, which is hit by serious snow only about once every 25 years, Zocca\u2019s snow tires are still in the trunk.<\/p>\n

wirestory<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

{{Pope Francis plans to drive around Vatican City at the wheel of a \u201cpopemobile\u201d that is a lot like him: frugal, clad in white, and with a fair bit of mileage.}} The 1984 Renault 4 economy car with 300,000 km (186,000 miles) on the clock was given to him by a 70-year-old priest from northern […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2000048258,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-10394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-people","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":{"id":2000048258,"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10394.jpg","alt":"","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","width":0,"height":0,"sizes":{"thumbnail":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10394.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10394.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"medium_large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10394.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"large":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10394.jpg","width":1,"height":1},"full":{"url":"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/IMG\/logo\/arton10394.jpg","width":0,"height":0}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2000048258"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10394"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=10394"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=10394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}