Word: gestatoria
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After a golden fanfare of trumpets from high in the nave, Pius XII, gold-mitred, red-robed, and flanked by the Swiss Guards in uniforms designed by Michelangelo, was borne through the throngs on the Sedia Gestatoria to his throne...
Thence, in his sedia gestatoria (portable chair) the Pope proceeded to the Basilica of St. John Lateran and the real business of the day. In a three-hour complicated ritual, he ascended and descended four Papal thrones, accepted two keys to the Lateran, gave his Cardinals special commemorative medals, laid an offering in a crimson velvet, gold-embroidered purse on the high altar. The long rite over, he appeared to the patient crowds on the balcony of the Basilica's portico. Mussolini's Italian guards struck up the papal hymn, the Pope's Palatine guards blared...
Diplomats, nobles, ecclesiastics, ex-royalty and representatives of reigning royalty filled the stands and ramps of St. Peter's when a glittering procession moved into the Basilica. Attendants waved great ostrich-feather fans, as the frail Holy Father, deathly pale, entered seated on his high sedia gestatoria (portable throne), garbed in a vast white cope...
...ailments were at all serious, Vatican functionaries set up a censorship of telephone calls, the word always perforce being: "The Pope is well." When the Pope learned at Christmas time what was being printed about him, he ex- claimed: "I must get up, sit on the sedia gestatoria and bless the pilgrims." Last week when few doctors could find any reason for long-term optimism, word went out that the Pope plans to address by radio the 33rd International Eucharistic Congress in Manila...
...satisfactory for his age." Chief trouble, Vatican attendants admitted, is that the Pope, once a sturdy mountain climber, finds it difficult not only to walk but to breathe easily. In all his daily activities he now is borne about in a sedan chair, or in his ceremonial sedia gestatoria (portable throne). Near the Benediction Hall, where Pius XI holds audiences, there has been set up behind a red curtain a portable washstand and toilet, with a cabinet containing first-aid medicaments. To this, and presumably to one like it at Castel Gandolfo, the Pope could, in case of an emergency...