Pope marries couple on papal plane
IQUIQUE, CHILE » It was all in a day’s work for Pope Francis.
First, he celebrated the first- ever airborne papal wedding, marrying two flight attendants at 36,000 feet on a flight Thursday.
After landing, Francis came to the rescue of a policewoman who was thrown from her rearing horse as his popemobile passed by.
In between, he did what he actually came to do: celebrate Mass for about 50,000 people in a hot field near the town of Iquique.
And as a final gesture to cap a most remarkable day even by Franciscan standards, the pope, 81, set off a near-national uproar by accusing victims of Chile’s most notorious pedophile priest of slander.
Welcome to the Francis papacy, five years on.
It all began with LATAM Flight 1250 from Santiago.
The crew of Chile’s flagship carrier was gathering in the first- class section for the usual photo with the pope when flight attendants Paula Podest and Carlos Ciuffardi revealed that they were a married couple. Francis motioned for them to sit next to him for the photo and asked if they had been married in the church.
They told Francis that they had been wed in a civil service in 2010 but had been unable to follow upwith a church ceremony because the Feb. 27, 2010, earthquake that rocked Chile had damaged the church.
Francis had a proposal of his own: “I’ll marry you!” and they readily agreed. The head of the airline served as the witness.
Ciuffardi said the pope also told them: “This is the sacrament that is missing in the world, the sacrament of marriage. May this motivate others to get the sacrament of marriage. I’ll do it for this reason.”
Ciuffardi and Podest, 39, have two children, 6-yearold Rafaela and 3-yearold Isabela. They said they plan to take a “mini-honeymoon” and return to Santiago on Friday.
The airborne wedding came about spontaneously, as is often the case with the ever-surprising Francis.
“We told him that we are husband and wife, that we have two daughters and that we would have loved to receive his blessing,” Ciuffardi said.
The couple said their church’s bell tower fell in the quake, forcing cancellation of the church service. One thing led to another, and they never followed up.