Word: ferragosto
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Paul's death came in the middle of the ferragosto, Italy's traditional August vacation break, and Curial Cardinals were scattered everywhere. Cables went out to them and to all Cardinals around the globe, summoning them to Rome. Sebastiano Baggio, head of the Vatican Congregation of Bishops, had to fly in from Colombia, where he was helping prepare an October meeting of Latin American bishops. On Tuesday, in the presence of those red hats who had arrived in the Eternal City, Villot raised a hammer and smashed the Fisherman's seal, inscribed with Paul's name, that had been removed...
...long mid-August Assumption holiday known as ferragosto and, except for tourists, Rome was a ghost town. But inside the big military hospital on the Caelian Hill overlooking the Colosseum, a lone middle-aged woman moved with purpose. Around 1 a.m., she paused in the doorway of Room No. 2, located on the third floor of the surgical pavilion at the rear of the block-long hospital complex. On the door she tacked a note handwritten in Italian: "Please do not disturb me until 10a.m...
They were taking a holiday. It was Ferragosto Day (Aug. 15), Italy's best loved and most ancient annual holiday,* and from the teeming Eternal City (pop. 1,600,000) a million Romans decamped to their seaside villas and to public picnic grounds in the Abruzzi Mountains or at war-famed Anzio Beach. Shops, offices, banks, even Vatican City's Sistine Chapel, were closed up tight, though St. Peter's, as always, stayed open. Garbage went uncollected. milk undelivered, newspapers unpublished and tourists unsolicited by the prostitutes in Villa Borghese park. At his summer palace of Castel...
Even the cops disappeared from Rome's deserted boulevards. Explained one of the sweating few who remained at his post: "There's nothing for [policemen] to do. No respectable crook would be caught dead in town on Ferragosto...
...Rome has celebrated Ferragosto for some 2,000 years. Most historians trace its origin to the three-day jeriae augustales (holidays of Augustus) proclaimed in 29 B.C. in honor of the triumphant return of Caesar Augustus from his campaign against Antony and Cleopatra. Some say it has even earlier beginnings. Six centuries later it became a universal Roman Catholic holiday, celebrating the anniversary of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into heaven...