VATICAN CITY - Pope Francis has cancelled
his regular appearances in public to stop crowds gathering to
see him and will stream them on the internet from inside the
Vatican because of the coronavirus outbreak in Italy.
The Vatican said that on Sunday the pontiff will not address
crowds from a window overlooking St. Peter's Square, and will
also not hold his general audience from there this Wednesday.
Both attract tens of thousands of people.
It will be one of the few times in the past 66 years that a
pope will not appear at the window, a ritual deeply engrained in
Roman tradition, with some families attending every week.
Both the address and general audience will be held without
public participation inside the official papal library in the
Vatican's Apostolic Palace and will be viewable on the internet
or television, the Vatican said in a statement on Saturday.
Popes began giving regular Sunday blessing from the window
in 1954 and have done so nearly every Sunday since, except for
when the pontiff is sick or out of Rome.
On May 17, 1981, four days after he nearly died in an
assassination attempt, Pope John Paul delivered the blessing
with a feeble voice from his bed at Rome's Gemelli hospital.
The Vatican also said that the participation of the faithful
at Francis' morning Mass in his residence has been suspended
until at least March 15.
The 83-year-old pope cancelled a Lent retreat for the first
time in his papacy, but the Vatican has said he is suffering
only from a cold that is "without symptoms related to other
pathologies".
A Vatican employee tested positive for coronavirus on
Friday, the first case in the tiny city-state that is surrounded
by Rome.
A Vatican source said the patient had participated in an
international conference hosted by the Pontifical Academy of
Life last week in a packed theatre several blocks from the
Vatican. Participants at the three-day conference on Artificial
Intelligence included top executives of U.S. tech giants
Microsoft and IBM.
The death toll from the new coronavirus in Italy, the
worst-hit European country, stood at 197 on Friday with more
than 4,600 cases, most of them in the north. In Rome province,
49 people have tested positive and one has died.