Pope Francis to drive his own 'popemobile' inside Vatican City

Pope Francis (R) is presented with a Renault 4 car during a private audience with Don Renzo Zocca at the Vatican in this picture taken September 7, 2013 and released by Osservatore Romano September 10, 2013.

Credit: Reuters/Osservatore Romano

By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY | Thu Sep 12, 2013 9:15am EDT

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis plans to drive around Vatican City at the wheel of a "popemobile" that is a lot like him: frugal, clad in white, and with a fair bit of mileage.

The 1984 Renault 4 economy car with 300,000 km (186,000 miles) on the clock was given to him by a 70-year-old priest from northern Italy, Father Renzo Zocca, who took the pope for a spin inside the walls of the tiny city-state.

"I think the pope will drive it a bit himself inside the Vatican," the Holy See's deputy spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said on Thursday.

After the pope appealed to priests several months ago not to drive expensive cars but to save money and give it to the poor, Zocca wrote him a letter saying he had used the same car for decades and wanted to give it to the pope as a symbolic gift.

He brought it last weekend, along with some of his parishioners, to the Vatican, where the pope told him he knew how to drive it because he had had a Renault 4 in Argentina.

The pope, 76, then got in and drove it, Zocca told the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family).

Francis, who, as a cardinal in Buenos Aires, traveled by subway, has shown a predilection for simple means of transport even after his election in March as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

On the night of his election, he shunned the bulletproof papal Mercedes limousine and rode in a minibus with the cardinals who had chosen him to lead the Roman Catholic church.

During his trip to Brazil in July he was driven around Rio de Janeiro in a small silver Fiat at his own request, and when he visited a refugee centre in Rome on Tuesday, he used a Ford Focus from the Vatican's car pool.

Francis has shunned the spacious and luxurious papal apartments used by his predecessors and has opted to live in a small suite in a Vatican guesthouse.

And while Francis will likely never need them in Rome, which is hit by serious snow only about once every 25 years, Zocca's snow tires are still in the trunk.

"You never know," he told Famiglia Cristiana.

(Editing by Louise Ireland and Paul Casciato)

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Pictures: What's Inside a Space Suit? X-Rays Reveal All

Image courtesy Mark Avino and Roland H. Cunningham, SI

The space suit above was built as a demonstration suit for testing in a vacuum chamber at NASA's Ames Research Center.

The chamber was designed to simulate the environment in outer space. Astronauts would get into their suits, hook themselves up to oxygen, and then go into the vacuum chamber, which simulated the environment at an altitude of 400,000 feet (121 kilometers).

"They were then asked to do repetitive and somewhat mind-numbing tasks, like walking up and down on a crate, so that technicians could check their suits," said Lewis.

Though the space program was relatively young in the late 1960s when this suit was developed, it was building off of almost 20 years of experience with hardened suit designs. They were originally made for the U.S. Air Force in the early 1950s, back when the Air Force used vacuum tubes in aircraft. (See pictures of early U.S. spaceflight.)

"But many of the vacuum tubes were failing," said Lewis. "And they needed to figure out why."

Enter Litton Industries. The large defense contractor, which was bought by Northrop Grumman Corporation in 2001, designed a vacuum chamber to test why the vacuum tubes were failing. But to do that, they needed to design a suit for a technician to wear while inside the vacuum chamber.

"The Air Force was intrigued," said Lewis. "Even after they discontinued the use of vacuum tubes in aircraft, they continued to fund Litton's suits. And when NASA formed [in 1958], they took over much of the research in suit development from the Air Force."

In the years that followed, hundreds of people worked on space suits: Engineers designed the suits, technicians tested them, manufacturers created the parts, and then other folks assembled the final product.

"You can't tell by the x-ray, but some of the components are hand-sewn," said Lewis.

Published July 29, 2013

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