Pope: Pilgrims flocking to Rome

2005-04-05 21:52

Rome - Snarled traffic, a travellers' protest and security constraints left Italian transport officials scrambling Tuesday to cope with the endless stream of people into Rome to pay their last respects to Pope John Paul II.

The Italian rail network Trenitalia has put on 43 extra trains a day, but that did not stop some 300 disgruntled pilgrims from mounting a protest after they were unable to get onto a jam-packed train.

The protesters blocked a railway line in southern Italy for nearly two hours when another train arrived that could take them on board, Trenitalia said.

Some 500 busloads of pilgrims began arriving south of Rome at about 04:00 on Tuesday, snarling rush hour traffic into the Italian capital, the Ansa news agency reported.

The city of Rome has provided 90 shuttle buses between the main Termini station and St Peter's Square, and the overloaded subway system issued an appeal for pilgrims to use the buses instead.

Meanwhile, Italy's civil aviation authority Enac said it planned to divert some 80 charter flights scheduled to land in Rome on Thursday and Friday, when the airspace over the Italian capital will be a no-fly zone as part of the security detail to protect some 200 dignitaries and world leaders expected for the funeral.

The flights will land instead in southern Naples and central Pescara from where the pilgrims will be transferred by bus and train to Rome, Enac said.

Some 300 000 people have already viewed the pope's body - at a rate of about 300 a minute - since it began lying in state at St Peter's Basilica on Monday evening.

About two million people are expected for the funeral on Friday, and travel agents, especially in the pope's native Poland, as well as Spain, are struggling to keep up with demand.

Trains from Poland

The Polish national airline LOT has sold out all its regular flights through Friday, and is laying on an extra flight on Tuesday as well as larger planes to service the Rome route, a spokesperson said.

Six special trains have been laid on in Poland, and a Franciscan travel agency in Warsaw that specialises in pilgrimages is offering special bus trips for hundreds of people from Krakow, near the pope's birthplace of Wadowice.

Hotels affordable to pilgrims are full to within a 200km radius of Rome, the travel agent said on Monday.

Spanish travel agents are also overwhelmed by demand, and the head of an association of Spanish travel agents, Jesus Martinez Milla, said that charter flights have been scrambled together while airlines are trying to add regular flights.

Several airlines said most of their flights to Rome were sold out, with Italy's Alitalia saying that the Brussels-Rome route was "unusually full" and Spain's Viajes Marsans was planning several charter flights from Madrid to the Eternal City.

- AFP