WAS THE KING’S JET AN ACT OF GOD TO PREVENT A HIGH ALTITUDE PAPAL PRESS CONFERENCE? THE PLANE THAT REMAINED IN SPAIN…

His Holiness, Pope Leo XIV, Supreme Pontiff, flies home to Rome on a Falcon! His Majesty, the King’s Falcon!

I thought that Pope Leo’s departure from Spain on the private jet of His Majesty, the King of Spain, was planned from the beginning.

But it wasn’t!

Spain’s Iberian Jetliner packed with reporters and others, which would have included Pope Leo and His Holiness’ Court, had a mechanical difficulty and could not take off.

Thus His Majesty, the King, came to the rescue of His Holiness the Pope and offered the Supreme Pontiff His Majesty’s private Falcon jet—but just for His Holiness the Pope and His Holiness’ Court.

Everyone else, mostly reporters, who would have sat back in steerage on the Iberian Flight had to take another flight back to Rome.

Thus there was no Papal High Altitude Press Conference! Praise God from Whom all blessings flow—a true act of God to cancel a papal press conference. 

Silirium non possum has a cynical comment on the press, in this regard:

The dismay of the press hacks

A dismal showing, then, and on an international scale, for the Spanish flag carrier, forced to watch the Pontiff being whisked away by a royal Falcon because of a fault on its own aircraft. An image that will not easily fade. Yet Iberia must be credited with one achievement, and not a small one: it spared the Pope the now unbearable end-of-journey press conference. That secular liturgy in which, at the end of every apostolic mission, the press hacks compete to weary the Pontiff, seeking to turn a pastoral pilgrimage into the question time of any ordinary politician.

Andrea Tornielli did not board the flight offered by the King: he is not the head of any dicastery, although he has still not understood as much, and he is not a cleric. For these gentlemen, in the end, the journey was a total flop. Tornielli flew to Spain at the Holy See’s expense, remained there without producing anything useful, took his beatings after inciting his “sworn enemies”, and on top of that even lost the return press conference. It is difficult to imagine a more eloquent ending.

P.V.
Silere non possum