Travelsmartplanet

It costs $500 a year to join Patrons of the Vatican Museums which means you are a donor to the Vatican museums. For your basic membership, you get to jump the line at Vatican Museums – as in going straight in to the Sistine Chapel in the morning before anyone else. You get private tours of off limits galleries and restoration labs, special access to St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Gardens, priority seating at the Pope’s weekly general audience, and can score coveted tickets to Midnight Mass.

This is not necessarily for Catholics, but for anyone who is an art buff and eager for behind the scenes access. On top of that, it’s a good deal as it is tax deductible.

Three hundred and fifty of this fundraising organization (of about 2500) of Vatican lovers, had a 30th anniversary gala this year. The guests, art loving philanthropists,  were mostly from the US; They had become excited after seeing  a  traveling exhibit of Vatican treasures. For only $1900 a person, they enjoyed five days of touring, VIP treatment, lectures on museum restoration, catered dinners in museum galleries, question and answer periods with top official in the Secretariat about Vatican reform, vespers service in the Sistine Chapel – and even a one-on-one with Pope Francis himself.

Pope Francis (born Jorge Mario Bergoglio) was born in the Flores neighborhood of Buenos Aires. You see the church where he worshipped and where he felt a calling to devote his life to God.

Twice on Saturdays and Sundays, a 3-hour FREE government-sponsored Papal Circuit bus tour takes you past 24 landmarks of his life: the tree-shaded street of his middle class childhood home (531 Membrillar, where his parents, Regina Maria Sivori and Mario Bergoglio raised their 5 children), the plaza where he played soccer, his school, his barber (where he also received pedicures!), his favorite newsstand, and the Metropolitan Cathedral which he presided over as an archbishop.

Tags: Argentina, barber, Buenos Aires, bus, church, circuit, home, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, landmark, Mario Bergoglio, Membrillar, Metropolitan Cathedral, newsstand, papal, pedicure, Pope Francis, Regina Maria Sivor, school, soccer, worship

80% of Lithuania is Catholic and there are 30 active churches in Vilnius alone. The Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in Vilnius was built by Jesuits in the 17th century in a white Baroque style. There are 2040 faces carved into the walls. It gets whitewashed every 5 years. Their chandelier was built in Holland and on its way when the boat sank. The chandelier you see there today is in the shape of a ship to remember that incident.

It has never been destroyed or closed – even thru the Communist times.

Walking into the Old Town through the Gates of Dawn, I was behind a teen boy who turned and crossed himself as he went through. We learned that he was looking at the Black Madonna