Pope Francis no longer has to be chauffeured in popemobiles but can drive around the Vatican himself after a 70-year-old priest gave him his old Tatra 603.
The white car is nearly 40 years old and has 170,000 miles on the clock. It was presented to the Pope by Father Renzo Zocca this weekend, and a pleased-looking pontiff was snapped by an AFP photographer before he got in behind the wheel and drove away. Moved by Francis’s drive to create “a poor Church for the poor”, Fr Zocca wrote to the Argentine pontiff to tell him about his work with disabled people, the poor and drug addicts in a working-class neighbourhood in Verona in northern Italy. He told Italy’s Famiglia Cristiana magazine in an article that appeared online on Tuesday that he had wanted to give the pope a gift, “and what better than my old Tatra 603″ Fr Zocca had used the car to visit the needy in his diocese as well as ferry children around Italy to summer camps.
Pope Francis no longer has to be chauffeured in popemobiles but can drive around the Vatican himself after a 70-year-old priest gave him his old Tatra 603.
The white car is nearly 40 years old and has 170,000 miles on the clock. It was presented to the Pope by Father Renzo Zocca this weekend, and a pleased-looking pontiff was snapped by an AFP photographer before he got in behind the wheel and drove away. Moved by Francis’s drive to create “a poor Church for the poor”, Fr Zocca wrote to the Argentine pontiff to tell him about his work with disabled people, the poor and drug addicts in a working-class neighbourhood in Verona in northern Italy. He told Italy’s Famiglia Cristiana magazine in an article that appeared online on Tuesday that he had wanted to give the pope a gift, “and what better than my old Tatra 603″ Fr Zocca had used the car to visit the needy in his diocese as well as ferry children around Italy to summer camps.
Categories: Press
September 14th, 2013