Italian priest gives Francis his 1984 Renault 4 with 186,000 miles on the clock to take for spins around Vatican City

Pope Francis plans to drive around Vatican City at the wheel of a popemobile that is a lot like him: frugal, clad in white and with a fair bit of mileage.

The 1984 Renault 4 with 186,000 miles on the clock was given to him by a 70-year-old priest from northern Italy, Father Renzo Zocca, who took the pope for a spin inside the walls of the tiny city-state.

“I think the pope will drive it a bit himself inside the Vatican,” the Holy See’s deputy spokesman, Father Ciro Benedettini, said on Thursday.

After the pope appealed to priests several months ago not to drive expensive cars but to save money and give it to the poor, Zocca wrote him a letter saying he had used the same car for decades and wanted to give it to the pope as a symbolic gift.

Last weekend Zocca brought the car, along with some of his parishioners, to the Vatican, where the pope told him he knew how to drive it because he had had a Renault 4 in Argentina.

The pope, 76, then got in and drove it, Zocca told the Italian Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana (Christian Family).

Francis, who as a cardinal in Buenos Aires travelled by subway, has shown a predilection for simple means of transport ever since his election in March as the first non-European pope in 1,300 years.

On the night of his election he shunned the bulletproof papal Mercedes limousine and rode in a minibus with the cardinals who had chosen him to lead the Roman Catholic church.

During his trip to Brazil in July he was driven around Rio de Janeiro in a small silver Fiat at his own request, and when he visited a refugee centre in Rome on Tuesday he used a Ford Focus from the Vatican’s car pool.

Francis has shunned the spacious and luxurious papal apartments used by his predecessors and has opted to live in a small suite in a Vatican guesthouse.

Although Francis will probably never need them in Rome, which is hit by serious snow only about once every 25 years, Zocca said his snow tyres were still in the boot. “You never know,” he told Famiglia Cristiana.

View Renault 4 History

Pope receives pair of electric cars from maker Renault

Sept. 6, 2012 (Vatican Radio) Pope Benedict XVI received a pair of electric cars from the auto maker Renault on Wednesday. A release from the Press Office of the Holy See on Thursday explains that both vehicles are completely electric, and have been built with the specific transportation needs of the Holy Father in mind.

According to the press release, one vehicle – a white Renault based on the design of the car maker’s Kangoo Maxi Z.E. model, with the Papal Seal emblazoned on its doors – is to serve the Holy Father as an “ecological, sustainable version of the ‘Popemobile’,” inside the Vatican and on the grounds of the Papal retreat at Castel Gandolfo. The other, a blue model with white and gold striping, is to be used by the Papal gendarmes in their security service to the Holy Father.
Throughout his pontificate, Pope Benedict has been very attentive to environmental issues, and has repeatedly stressed the need for sustainable development that pursues the preservation of creation.

The press release goes on to explain that the Renault group, in making this gift to Pope Benedict, is trying to place its experience as a leading automobile manufacturer in the field of electric vehicles, in support of the Vatican’s own environmental regulations and guidelines for achieving sustainability.