Vatican City, Nov 5, 2024 / 11:40 am (CNA).
The Vatican last week opened a center to welcome pilgrims and tourists before they visit St. Peter’s Basilica.
The space, which was inaugurated Oct. 31, is intended to provide practical, artistic, and spiritual information to visitors of the Vatican basilica — especially during moments of higher than usual influx, as expected during the 2025 Jubilee Year.
Pope Francis said in a recent meeting with priests who hear confessions at St. Peter’s Basilica that the church has over 40,000 visitors a day.
The welcome center will also offer support for visitors with physical disabilities and sell official St. Peter’s Basilica-branded objects.
The “Official Area,” as the Vatican is calling the center, is located about a five-minute walk from St. Peter’s Square at the far end of the main thoroughfare leading to the basilica — at the address Via della Conciliazione 3a.
The Vatican has partnered with two Italian organizations, the nonprofit BeHuman and the for-profit company Civita Mostre e Musei, to create the welcome center, which will also have priests, religious, and laypeople available for spiritual discussions, “listening, and empathy,” a press release said.
The Vatican also plans to use the visitor center to provide educational opportunities for children and teenagers, and will host school visits during the 2025 holy year.
In his Oct. 24 audience with Franciscan priests of the Friars Minor Conventual, who are entrusted with hearing confessions in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis said that while many people come to the Vatican “to pray at the tomb of the first of the apostles, to confirm their faith and their communion with the Church, to entrust dear intentions to the Lord… Others, even of different faiths, enter it as ‘tourists,’ attracted by the beauty, the history, the charm of the art.”
“But in everyone there is one great quest, conscious or unconscious: the quest for God, beauty, and eternal goodness,” he said.
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