When 87-year-old Pope Francis boarded ITA Airways flight AZ4001 – that, by the way, is always the designation for a pope’s outbound flight – to travel to Asia and Oceania on 2 September, he became the oldest pontiff ever to venture outside Rome, affording him yet another chance to demonstrate that rumours of his impending demise have been greatly exaggerated.
As one papal intimate put it recently after spending time with the Pope at his residence in the Casa Santa Marta, “This pope has absolutely no intention of dying anytime soon".
