Pope on minimalist mountain holiday to rest

When Pope John Paul looks out on St Peter's Square, he sees Rome's eternal traffic jams. Now, the frail Pontiff is winding down for much needed rest in an isolated chalet with a view of Mont Blanc.

Les Combes, a tiny hamlet in this picturebook area of green valleys, deep gorges, white-water streams and distant churches with needle steeples, will be the Vatican for the next 13 days.

But there won't be much pontificating. The only public appearance by the 84-year-old Pontiff will be a public prayer and blessing on Sunday.

Les Combes' normal population is about five people in winter and about 25 in summer, depending on who is counting. Everything is arguable in a small town.

"This is a small place and I guess that's why the Pope likes coming back here," said Osvaldo Naudin, mayor of Introd, the municipality - population 560 - that includes Les Combes as one of its 12 hamlets near the border with France.

In fact, Introd has nothing of what would attract some holidaymakers.

It is - literally - a one petrol station town. It was also a one coffee bar town until last year, but it shut down and now Introd is a no coffee bar town.

Before the Pope started going there in 1989, the most important people to pass through the Aosta Valley region near the French border were the kings of Italy on their way to the Savoy family hunting grounds.

"We are mountain people and privacy and discreetness are kind of in our DNA," Mr Naudin said.

And just in case they are not discreet enough, dozens of plainclothes and uniformed police have been brought in to make sure the Pope is not disturbed.

The Pontiff, an avid mountaineer when he was a young man in his native Poland, is a pale shadow of his former robust self.

Parkinson's disease has left him shaking, sometimes uncontrollably, and severe knee arthritis has consigned the man once called "God's Athlete" to a wheeled chair.

The Pope is expected to leave the chalet every morning for different, secret locations, where aides will pitch a canopy or tent, white of course, so he can read, meditate and converse on subjects from theology to poetry.

And if the weather keeps him indoors, the view of the 4,807-metre-high Mont Blanc is consolation. Aides say they hope the mountain break will re-invigorate him ahead of his return to Rome on July 17 and a two-day trip to the French shrine city of Lourdes on August 14-15.

There, he will have to be a full-time Pope again. Millions of people are expected to go to Lourdes to see him. Les Combes, and its population of "about 25 in summer" will be a distant memory.