{{The last chance for a Sunday blessing from Pope Benedict XVI from his studio window is drawing a crowd to St. Peter’s Square.}}<\/p>\n
The vast cobblestone space was filling up with faithful as well as others wanting to see Benedict in his next-to-last scheduled appearance to the public before he retires to a seclude life of prayer in a Vatican monastery. <\/p>\n
Benedict, 85, steps down on Thursday, the first pontiff to resign in 600 years. He will hold his last public audience in the square on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
The Sunday appearance from the papal apartment window overlooking the square is a cherished tradition for pilgrims and tourists, usually attracting a few thousand people. <\/p>\n
Officials say this history-making moment could draw far more than 100,000 despite forecasts for heavy rain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{The last chance for a Sunday blessing from Pope Benedict XVI from his studio window is drawing a crowd to St. Peter’s Square.}} The vast cobblestone space was filling up with faithful as well as others wanting to see Benedict in his next-to-last scheduled appearance to the public before he retires to a seclude life […]<\/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-6115","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\/6115","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=6115"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6115\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=6115"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=6115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}