by our correspondent
Gianluca Biccini
Leo XIV’s trip to Spain ended in an unusual way, due to a breakdown in the plane that was supposed to take him back to Rome. Yesterday evening, the Pope returned aboard the military Falcon made available by the King of Spain, Felipe VI, who had come specifically from Madrid to Tenerife for the farewell ceremony, which already took place more than an hour late. The aircraft, which landed in Fiumicino at 11.05pm, took off from the northern airport of the largest Canary Island (Los Rodeos) at 6.08pm local time, after a technical fault was found in the Iberia Company’s A320, on which the Pope had already boarded.
The sovereign of Spain himself, realizing that the take-off operations were being prolonged, decided to get on board to speak with Leo XIV. Therefore the ladder was brought back and after a few minutes they both went down to the ground and went back to the VIP lounge of the airport, until the positive epilogue of the story. The ecclesiastics of his entourage traveled together with the Pope. The staff of the Holy See and the journalists of the Papal Flight returned in the following hours with another aircraft also from the Spanish flag carrier.
Never in the more than sixty-year history of papal flights had a plane with the Pope on board had anomalies before taking off, forcing the Bishop of Rome to change carrier. But although there are no similar precedents in recent times, the singular setback has brought to mind for most people another unexpected event linked to papal travels: the one which in 1988 forced Saint John Paul II, flying from Botswana to Lesotho, to make an emergency landing in South Africa, due to a violent storm that hit Maseru, the capital of the country of destination. News reports of the time say that the Polish Pope did not want to set foot in the country where Apartheid was in force, but for technical security reasons he was forced to make a technical stopover in Johannesburg, from where he then continued his journey by car to nearby Lesotho.
Another coincidence is also singular: that episode almost 38 years ago occurred on September 14, the same as the birthday of Robert Francis Prevost, then a missionary in Peru, who was turning 33.
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by our correspondent Gianluca Biccini
