Friday, January 4, 2013

OVER 20 MILLION PARTICIPANTS IN PAPAL EVENTS SINCE 2005

Vatican City, 4 January 2013 (VIS) - The Prefecture of the Papal Household today published a communique in which it reported that during 2012, 2,351,200 faithful participated in the various encounters with Benedict XVI: general audiences (447,000), private audiences (146,800), liturgical celebrations (501,400), Angelus and Regina Coeli (1,256,000). These data refer exclusively to activities which took place within the Vatican and at Castel Gandolfo, and do not include other events during which hundreds of thousands of faithful have gathered around the Pope, such as apostolic visits to Mexico and Cuba last spring, and to Lebanon in September. During the past year the Pope also made several visits within Italy, for instance to Arezzo-San Sepolcro, Emilia Romagna, Loreto, and the World Meeting of Families in Milan in June.

The Prefecture of the Papal Household emphasises that these are approximate data calculated on the basis of requests to participate in events and invitations issued by the Prefecture. Additionally, an estimate has been given for the number of attendees at the Angelus and the major celebrations in St. Peter's Square.

In total, according to the data provided by the Prefecture of the Papal Household, 20,544,970 people have attended papal events with Benedict XVI.