Cabin crew members ask pontiff for a blessing but Francis instead conducts marriage ceremony

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

The bride had walked down the aisle countless times before, usually pushing a trolley of drinks or reheated food. She wore a neat uniform with a name badge instead of a white dress, and probably checked the guests had fastened their seat belts before the ceremony.

Love was definitely in the air when Pope Francis married two cabin crew members in an impromptu wedding on a flight taking the pontiff and his entourage between two Chilean cities.

Paula Podest, 39, and Carlos Ciuffardi, 41, had been married in a civil service but their planned religious ceremony was scotched when an earthquake in 2010 almost destroyed their parish church in the Chilean capital, Santiago.

Seizing an unmissable opportunity, the couple asked Francis to bless their marriage. But he had something else in mind.

“Do you want me to marry you?” he asked them.

“Here?” they replied, astonished.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Pope Francis conducts the wedding ceremony at the front of the plane. Photograph: Osservatore Romano Press Office Handout/EPA

The pope said yes and performed a brief ceremony at the front of the plane. An airline executive was the official witness and a document was signed by a Chilean bishop on board.

“It was a great surprise and great joy,” said Greg Burke, the Vatican spokesman. “Everything is valid. Everything is official.”

The Catholic church’s view that civil wedding ceremonies are not legitimate in the eyes of God, and therefore the couple’s two children, Rafaella, six, and Isabella, three, were born out of wedlock, appears to have been glossed over.

Podest and Ciuffardi met more than 10 years ago when she was his boss as a steward for LATAM, Chile’s flagship airline.

As wedding gifts, Francis gave the bride a white rosary and the groom a black one. He asked Ciuffardi if his wife was still the boss; Ciuffardi laughed and said yes.

The pope told the couple: “This is what’s missing in the world, the sacrament of marriage. I hope this motivates couples to marry.”

The couple said they planned to celebrate with a “tiny honeymoon” in the northern city of Iquique on Thursday night, before flying back to Santiago on Friday.

In 2016, Francis published a 256-page document, Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love), which acknowledged many of the pressures on modern family life.

