Pilgrims may need a miracle of their own to find an affordable room in Rome over the weekend of Pope John Paul II’s beatification ceremony.
Or then again, they may strike lucky.
The Vatican travel agency said prices might tumble in the coming weeks because predictions of upward of a million people pouring into the city for the May 1 event could put people off.
Others might resist the temptation to take a Roman holiday after complaints about six-fold increases in hotel prices and Vatican warnings about unscrupulous agents hawking services on the internet to procure “tickets” for the beatification.
There are no tickets.
The Vatican decided it will be first-come, first-served, for visitors securing a place in St Peter’s Square for the ceremony to mark the last formal step before possible sainthood for the Pontiff.
But first you need to check in.
The rector of Santa Susanna church, home to many expat Catholics, said e-mails and phone calls from as far away as Australia started arriving in January, when John Paul’s successor, Pope Benedict, approved the miracle needed for beatification, setting on Sunday, May 1 – exactly a week after Easter, when Rome is already swamped with tourists – as the date.
“People want a place for €80,” said the rector, the Rev. Gregory Apparcel.
But the convents listed by Santa Susanna on a popular link on its website are already booked solid, he said.
The last few years have seen soaring demand for rooms rented out by nuns as safe, clean and economical alternatives to the nondescript hotels that often charge upward of €150 nightly for claustrophobic rooms.
“At this point, if you don’t have a hotel room, don’t come,” advised Rev. Apparcel.
But the Vatican says to have faith.
“Today you stand a better chance of finding a room than a month ago,” said Rev. Caesar Atuire, head of the Vatican’s tourist agency for pilgrims, Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi.
Forty days before the beatification, “brokers” – others might call them speculators – who bought up big blocks of hotel rooms in hopes of booking them out at a profit contacted his agency, asking it to take the rooms off their hands, he said.
Hotel rooms can be booked by the general public – Catholic or not – through a link on the Opera Romana Pellegrinaggi site: http://www.jpiibeatus.org/en/site/whereToStay .
“I try to negotiate real hard to obtain the best for my pilgrims. I have a moral duty” to them, said the priest.
Lower prices might be welcome after what Italian consumer group Codacons found sampling a half-dozen hotels near St John Lateran Basilica.
Suspecting price-fixing, it lodged a complaint with Italy’s competition authority about room prices soaring from €170 to more than €1,000 for the beatification weekend.
“Only the rich are going to be able to come to this beatification,” said a Codacons spokesman.
Some Italians will try to beat Rome’s hotel prices by lodging as far as 125 miles away in Pescara, on the Adriatic coast, and taking chartered buses to the beatification.
Pilgrims from John Paul’s homeland, Poland, “will hardly sleep a night in Rome,” opting for outlying towns, the Rev. Atuire said.
Italy’s high-speed train service between the capital and Naples or Florence can shave commute time to less than 90 minutes, but steep ticket prices will erode any savings on hotels.
If you hate to rise early or have crowd phobia, take Rev. Apparcel’s advice and watch the beatification on your hotel TV.
The ceremony, led by Pope Benedict XVI, begins at 10 a.m.
Spectators can then file inside St Peter’s Basilica past John Paul’s closed coffin, which will be brought up from its grotto tomb below the basilica.
The Saturday evening before the ceremony will see hundreds of thousands of the Pope’s admirers jam the sprawling, dusty field of Circus Maximus for a prayer vigil.
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