{{Crowds are gathering in St. Peter’s Square for Pope Benedict XVI’s first Sunday window blessing since his retirement announcement, and the second-to-last before he leaves the papacy.}}<\/p>\n
The traditional Sunday appointment normally attracts a few thousand pilgrims and tourists, but city officials expect that this historic occasion may draw up to 150,000 people.<\/p>\n
The city threw on extra buses and subway trains, and is offering free shuttle vans for the elderly and disabled. <\/p>\n
Free hot tea is also being prepared to ward off the early morning chill.<\/p>\n
Benedict shocked the world last week by announcing he is resigning on Feb. 28 \u2014 the first papal abdication in 600 years.<\/p>\n
He will live essentially a cloistered life in a monastery behind Vatican City’s walls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{Crowds are gathering in St. Peter’s Square for Pope Benedict XVI’s first Sunday window blessing since his retirement announcement, and the second-to-last before he leaves the papacy.}} The traditional Sunday appointment normally attracts a few thousand pilgrims and tourists, but city officials expect that this historic occasion may draw up to 150,000 people. The city […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[101],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-5925","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion","tag-internationl","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":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5925","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=5925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5925"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=5925"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=5925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}