Mystery of Pope’s night-time visits to his old haunts

By Hilary Clarke in Rome

The Vatican, citadel of secrets and intrigue, has thrown up another little mystery: what has the Pope been doing on a spate of night-time missions to his old cardinal lodgings?

Over the past few weeks, the German pontiff has been seen sneaking back to his old room outside the Vatican walls three times, La Stampa reported yesterday.

	The Pope in plain garb when he was a cardinal

At about 9pm a plain, dark car carrying 78-year-old Pope Benedict and his private secretary, Don Georg Gaenswein, swirls out of a side door of Vatican city. It then doubles round in the back streets before arriving at 1 Piazza Citta Leonina, a hall of residence for senior Church figures and the Pope’s home as a cardinal for almost 24 years.

A Vatican security guard is always waiting in front of the apartments in a pedestrian zone tucked behind St Peter’s Square. The Pope gets out of the car disguised in the plain black priest’s robes he wore when he was the Catholic Church’s senior theologian.

Wearing a black hat and with his head down, he opens the wooden door himself, as he did for all those years, and tiptoes inside followed by Don Georg.

"Its is not a question of just dashing in for a few minutes to grab a bag or a book," La Stampa said. "He spends at least a couple of hours there."

Nine months after moving into the spacious papal apartment in the Apostolic Palace overlooking St Peter’s Square, Pope Benedict appears to be hankering after his old, reflective life as a cardinal and a theologian in a bedsit.

"We shouldn’t be surprised " wrote Marco Tossati, La Stampa’s Vatican correspondent. "The calm existence he had before, and the most certainly more weighty one he has now are separated by just a few hundred metres; maybe the temptation is just too much even for the strong but delicate personality of Benedict XVI."

	The Pope in the red, fur-lined hat he wore at Christmas

The Pope is already starting to gain a reputation for slightly eccentric behaviour and a penchant for disguise. At Christmas he delighted crowds by turning out in a red, fur-lined hat that used to be worn by popes in the Middle Ages to keep their heads warm. He has also been seen wearing red Prada shoes and pricey Serengeti sunglasses.

Discretion seems to be the catchword for the Pope’s recent evening visits to the security of his old home. He does not even stop for a chat with his former room-mates, who La Stampa said, would be relieved that he no longer indulges in his old habit of playing Bach and Mozart a little too loudly.

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