Italy sorts vast piles of post for popular Pope Leo

Fiumicino, Italy: Leo XIV has not long been Pope, yet the American head of the Catholic Church already receives 100 kilogrammes of letters a day, fait...

Fiumicino, Italy: Leo XIV has not long been Pope, yet the American head of the Catholic Church already receives 100 kilogrammes of letters a day, faithfully sorted by the Italian post office.

Missives from around the world, addressed to "His Holiness" in flowing cursive, in stark block capitals or in scrawls, are sorted into a series of yellow crates in a vast hangar near Rome's Fiumicino airport.

Robert Francis Prevost was a relatively unknown churchman when he was elected pontiff on May 8, but vast numbers of the faithful are penning him letters of support and pleas for him to pray on their behalf.

"We receive hundreds of letters a day addressed to the Pope, with peaks of 100 kilos (220 pounds) per day, or an average of 500 to 550 kilos per week," Antonello Chidichimo, director of the sorting centre, told AFP.

"There are many letters written by children, postcards, and it's wonderful to see that in the digital age, many people still use a pen to write to the Pope," he noted.