Pope Bergoglio celebrates Holy Mass in the small Chapel of St. Martha’s home , the place chosen as His residence, from Monday to Saturday at 7.00am.
Many Followers wish to take part in the religious ceremony to listen to the words of the Pope and to receive the opportunity of a quick personal greeting devoted to the participants from Pope Francis Himself at the end of the ceremony.
Unfortunately, the Chapel of St. Martha is quite small: there are only 50 seats and half of these are booked each day in turn on behalf of a priest of one of the numerous congregations of the Diocese in Rome of which the Pope is Bishop, as well as for some of His devoted Followers.
The remaining vacancies, about 25 each day, will be available to the devoted Followers upon request; thousands of requests are received from all over the world each day and naturally the waiting lists have got longer.
Selection criteria adopted in the acceptance of such requests are random and not based on recommendations or acquaintances with other prelates.
In April 2015, the Pope sent through His secretaries a circular letter explaining: “Owing to the numerous requests that come from all over the world, it is not possible to welcome all the requests to participate in the celebrations of Domus Sanctae Martae. Whoever does wish to, may take part in the general Hearing on Wednesday booking the tickets from ‘Prefettura della Casa Pontificia”.
Whoever wishes to try and is willing to wait several months (for this dream to come true) may send their request to participate by ordinary mail to the following address:
To the Secretary of His Holiness Pope Francis, Casa Santa Marta – 00120 Città del Vaticano
The request should express the number of persons to participate along with the details in order to be able to be contacted (name, surname, address and telephone), in addition to any possible reasons either ordinary or extraordinary such as anniversaries, recurrences etc …
Comprehensibly, it will not be possible to request for a specific date: should the request be accepted, the date selected and proposed by the Secretary of His Holiness will be the only one that can be accepted .
The reply will be sent via a letter , which must be used as a pass to access ‘ Casa Santa Marta’. The appointment will be at 6.30am – 6.45am at the Pope’s residence, from there, the entire group of devotees will hence be accompanied to the Chapel just before the arrival of Pope Francis.
Before forwarding any request, we recommend contacting the ‘ Prefettura della Casa Pontificia’ (from 9am to 1pm) for confirmation and/or any amendments regarding arrangements, at the following numbers: (+39 06 698 848 76) – (+39 06 698 831 14) – (+39 06 698 832 73).
A reminder that Pope Francis’ mass is on the air every morning on Radio Vaticana.
Hereafter the forms of places that may be directly contacted in order to better arrange your stay in Rome and around the province of Rome.
