How about going HERE for a retreat?

Behold, Ariccia, where Pope Francis and the curia will be spending a few days during Lent on retreat.

From CNS: 

“As a good Jesuit,” Pope Francis knows it is best not to try to make a retreat where one lives and works, so he has decided the annual papal Lenten retreat with Roman Curia officials will be held outside Rome, a Vatican spokesman said.

The annual retreat will take place March 9-14 at the Pauline Fathers’ retreat and conference center in Ariccia, a town about 20 miles southeast of Rome, said Passionist Father Ciro Benedettini, vice director of the Vatican press office.

The tradition of having weeklong, preached “spiritual exercises” for the pope and members of the papal household began with Pope Pius XI in 1925. For more than 35 years, it was an Advent, not a Lenten retreat.

Pope John XXIII broke the Advent tradition in 1962 when he spent a week in September on retreat to prepare for the Second Vatican Council. His successor, Pope Paul VI, made the retreats a Lenten staple in 1964 and broadened the list of preachers, who almost always had been Jesuits.

The retreats traditionally were held in the Redemptoris Mater Chapel in the Apostolic Palace, beginning on the first Sunday of Lent and concluding the following Saturday morning. Pope Francis’ retreat will be a bit shorter, presumably because it involves having the Curia leave the Vatican.

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