Leo XIV moved to an attic of the Apostolic Palace. With private gym and maximum sobriety. This is where the previous popes lived instead
Attic with gym. Leo XIV is about to make a housing choice that marks another discontinuity compared to his predecessor Francis and this time even to all the other popes. Always maintaining, however, that spirit of sobriety that distinguishes it. The new pontiff will leave Casa Santa Marta (where Bergoglio had chosen to live to avoid, according to him, the isolation of the papal apartment) to move to Apostolic Palace. And not in the apartments traditionally reserved for the Holy Father, but in the attic. More precisely, in the “ceilings”, as the “attic” rooms where the pontifical secretaries lived in the past are called in the Vatican.
The renovation works of the Apostolic Palace are finally coming to an end, and the move of Leo XIV, together with his two secretaries Don Edgar Rimaycuna and Don Marco Billeri, is now a matter of days. The new home appears very sober, in line with its tenant. Sober, yes, but also equipped with a gym where the pontiff, who relaxes between tennis and the swimming pool in Castel Gandolfo, will be able to keep fit according to the principle of «mens sana in corpore sano»taken from an illustrious paragraph of Satires of Juvenal.
The attic life of Leo XIV
There Vatican press room clarified the distribution of spaces: «The Pope intends to use the spaces available to his predecessors as homes, for himself and his closest collaborators. The study, where the work is completed and where the Pope has already resumed working during the day, is the one from which he looks out for prayer with the faithful gathered in St. Peter’s Square below.”
In other words, the «noble floor» of the Apostolic Palacetraditionally inhabited by pontiffs, will become the public part of the papal dayintended for the reception of guests and official activities. Private life, however, will take place in the atticin the spaces once reserved for papal servitude.
Where the popes have historically lived
Leo XIV’s choice is in continuity with the breaking of one hundred and ten years of tradition (Francis was the first not to live in the Apostolic Palace), but at the same time he marks a different path compared to Bergoglio. All previous popes, in fact, stayed at the Apostolic Palace as Provost, but not in an attic. And they didn’t have a gym, much less in their own home. In short, no more voluntary isolation in Santa Marta, but not even a return to the historic apartments. A third way, intimate and functional.
