For months, construction crews have been renovating a four-storey building attached to a monastery on the northern edge of the Vatican gardens where nuns would live for a few years at a time in cloister. Only a few Vatican officials knew it would one day be Pope Benedict XVI’s retirement home.
On Tuesday, construction materials littered the front of the house and plastic tubing snaked down from the top floor to a cargo container as the restoration deadline became more critical following pontiff’s decision to quit on February 28 and live his remaining days in prayer.
From a new name to this new home to the unprecedented reality of having two living popes, the Pope is facing uncharted territory as he becomes the first pontiff in six centuries to retire.
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