Pope Leo XIV has extended his vacation at Castel Gandolfo by two days—now leaving July 22 rather than July 20, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni confirmed in a statement to reporters on Sunday. He will return Aug. 15-17 for the Italian holiday of Ferragosto.
Pope Francis famously refused to vacation in the cooler climes of Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence an hour outside Rome for most popes since 1626, to the consternation of the town’s residents; he later turned the papal villa into a museum that local shopkeepers say benefitted them. This year, the new pope opted to vacation in a smaller villa there that is cut off from the portion of the papal property open to tourists in the lakeside village.
Still, Pope Leo’s first “vacation” has, like Francis’ so-called summer holidays in Rome, been a “working vacation.” Since his vacation began on July 6, Leo has celebrated an outdoor “Mass for the Care of Creation,” celebrated Mass at an Italian police station and visited a Poor Clares monastery nearby, spoke with young people at the Castel Gandolfo parish, met a U.S. Catholic-Orthodox dialogue group and had a phone call with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The prior general of the Augustinians, the religious order to which Pope Leo belongs, revealed in an interview with the Italian newspaper Il Messaggero that Leo would be using his vacation to work on his first encyclical, which he said will likely address issues Leo has raised often in the early days of his pontificate: peace, unity and artificial intelligence.
What do popes do for fun?
Leo admitted to the young parishioners at Castel Gandolfo that he hasn’t had much time to relax since becoming the leader of the Catholic Church, but he gave some clues as to what he intends to do with his free time, promising to play a game of basketball with them; he also said he would play tennis “when the waters calm,” according to a man who gave the pope a tennis hat at the event and spoke to reporters afterward. The new pope is known to be a tennis fan and found time to play a match at the Augustinians’ court just outside the Vatican with his priest-secretary after his election. The Vatican confirmed that a tennis court was being constructed at Castel Gandolfo ahead of the pope’s visit.
Leo’s hobbies also include playing piano—he recently played a “not easy” piece by Béla Bartók for a visiting orchestra conductor at the Vatican, according to the Augustinian prior general. He also loves to take road trips and has extensive knowledge about cars, according to friends who spoke to America for a three-part deep dive series about the new pope. He is said to have fixed parishioners’ cars in Peru, sometimes following YouTube tutorials.
Pope Francis was also known as a music lover: He kept a large collection of around 2,000 CDs, mostly classical music but also 25 Elvis Presley albums, and he was photographed in 2022 visiting a record shop he had frequented before becoming pope. He was also a fan of Argentine tango. Francis’ favorite way to spend his free time, though, seems to have been spending time with people: Friends came for private audiences with him in the afternoons, and he famously chose to live in the Vatican guesthouse, Casa Santa Marta, in order to avoid the isolation of the Apostolic Palace, where popes ordinarily live.
Pope Benedict XVI also played piano in his free time; his favorite composer was Mozart. He was known to be a cat lover, too, feeding the stray cats in the Vatican gardens as a cardinal and befriending some in his retirement. In an interview book, Pope Francis recalled seeing then-Cardinal Ratzinger walking toward his house surrounded by cats. “I think he knew the language of cats,” he said. Benedict also held a license to fly helicopters, although he did not have a driver’s license, and at times he piloted the papal helicopter between the Vatican and Castel Gandolfo—about a 15-minute trip.
Benedict generally spent August and most of September at Castel Gandolfo, and, like Leo’s and Francis’, his were working vacations. However, in July of 2005, 2006 and 2009, he enjoyed “genuine down time” at a chalet owned by the Salesians in Las Combes, Italy, a town at the foot of the Alps. St. John Paul II followed a similar summer schedule between Las Combes and Castel Gandolfo for 10 years (1989-1999); in the earlier years of his pontificate, he would take secret trips to various Alpine sites to hike. His security guards recalled being left winded trying to keep up with him.
Like Pope Leo, John Paul II was athletic; in addition to Alpine hiking, he liked to ski, canoe or kayak and swim. He was famously criticized for having a pool installed at Castel Gandolfo for his use early in his pontificate; when confronted about the cost, he joked that it would be more expensive to hold another conclave. (The year he was elected, 1978, saw two conclaves: the first elected John Paul I, who died after 33 days in office—contributing to the cardinals’ desire to elect a pope who was in vigorous health.) The swimming pool, which was prepared for Pope Leo’s visit this year, was not always a peaceful retreat for John Paul II; he was once hunted down by paparazzi and photographed there in his swim trunks. The photos made international headlines after an unsuccessful attempt by the Vatican to halt their publication.
Between his vacations, Pope Leo is set to return to the Vatican for its Jubilee of Youth, being held July 28 to Aug. 3, which will bring thousands of young people to Rome. Following his vacation, the pope is expected to make a number of Vatican appointments and will travel to Turkey at the end of November.
A long history
Located in the Alban Hills outside Rome, Castel Gandolfo has been a getaway from the hot Roman summer for thousands of years. Long an agriculturally rich area, the hills around Castel Ganfolfo are dotted with vineyards and wineries. The Roman emperor Domitian had his most extravagant villa on the shore of Lake Albano there.
The current apostolic palace at Castel Gandolfo was constructed as a papal residence during the reign of Pope Urban VIII in 1626, meaning next year will be its 400th anniversary in that role.
During many decades of conflict with the Italian secular state after the 19th-century Risorgimento that united current-day Italy, Castel Gandolfo fell into disuse: No pope visited from 1870 until 1929. Following the signing that year of the Lateran Pacts, which formalized relations between the Italian Republic and the Catholic Church, popes began using the site for vacations and meetings again.
In 1938, Pope Pius XI (and his secretary of state Eugenio Pacelli, the future Pope Pius XII) spent six months at Castel Gandolfo, likely to avoid any appearance of collaboration or conflict with Italian dictator Benito Mussolini or his guest in Rome in May of that year for huge fascist celebrations: Adolf Hitler.
Pius XI also moved the Vatican Observatory from the Vatican Gardens to Castel Gandolfo, and commissioned a new telescope for the observatory on the roof of the apostolic palace. The observatory’s headquarters and one of its two main locations (the other is in Tucson, Ariz.) remains there today.
During World War II, Castel Gandolfo (both the town and the apostolic palace) served as a refuge for more than 12,000 civilians fleeing Rome, including hundreds of Roman Jews. News reports later claimed over 40 children had been born in the papal apartments at Castel Gandolfo, which were being used as a nursery. An Allied bombing raid in 1944 killed more than 500 refugees in the apostolic palace.
Many popes over the centuries have spent their final days at Castel Gandolfo, and two modern-era popes died there. Pope Pius XII died in the apostolic palace at Castel Gandolfo on Oct. 9, 1958, and Pope Paul VI died there on Aug. 6, 1978.
