A day at the Vatican for Pope Benedict XVI begins shortly after six o'clock, when the Pope gets up.
Around 6:50 a.m. Ratzinger leaves his room and crosses the twenty meters that separate his room from the chapel.
When he enters the chapel, the Pope stops to pray briefly, placing his glasses on the altar, then goes into the small sacristy to don the robes.
At that moment the two secretaries, the German Gänswein Georg and the Maltese Alfred Xuereb, are ready to celebrate mass.
Loredana, Carmela, Cristina and Rossella, the “memores” Domini of Communion and Liberation who assist the Pope in everyday life, participate in the ritual. The chamber assistant Paul Gabriele is also present at the mass.
After the Mass, Benedict XVI stops in the chapel to recite the Breviary.
Breakfast is served in the dining room at eight o'clock.
For breakfast Ratzinger partakes of coffee with milk, bread, butter and jam, sometimes he will allow himself some sweets - cakes or biscuits - brought as a gift by some visitors.
After breakfast, the Pope retires to his room.
At 9 a.m. he usually enters his private study adjoining the bedroom, in which there are a desk and a library: it is the room from which he looks out for the Sunday Angelus.
Benedict XVI begins to work and meets another consecrated lay of the Schoenstatt movement, Ms. Birgit, a typist who knows better than anyone else how to read his handwriting.
After her, Don Georg Gänswein enters the studio to discuss the agenda for the day, and sorts out the work.
The work of the Holy Father continues until 11 a.m., when the audiences begin. Benedict XVI descends to the floor below, to the representation apartment. Here he receives bishops, heads of state, groups of church people.
After the audiences the Pope, with his secretaries and personal assistant, go back upstairs to the private apartment.
Lunch is served at 1.15 p.m.
If there are no guests at the table with the Pope the secretaries and the four “memores" join him, while the chamber assistant serves lunch.
Everyone rises from the table before 2.00 p.m. Benedict XVI and his secretaries go for a short walk on the roof garden built by Pope Paul VI on the roof of the apostolic palace.
In the afternoon Ratzinger descends in the Vatican gardens to pray the Rosary before stopping before the reproduction of the grotto of Lourdes.
In the late afternoon, at 6 p.m., there are the so-called “table hearings”, that is, the regular audiences for some of the closest collaborators, such as Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone.
Then there is still plenty of time dedicated to prayer: this is the moment when the Pope, kneeling in his private chapel, turns to God with the intentions or petitions received from the faithful, which are stored in the kneeler.
Dinner is served at 7.30 p.m.
At 8 p.m. the Pope and his family move to the adjacent lounge with green armchairs and look at Tg1.
At 8.30 p.m., when the evening news is over, the Pope takes another short walk, if possible in the roof garden, otherwise inside the apartment, then at 9.00 p.m. he says goodbye to everyone and retires, continuing to work for another hour or two in his library before going to bed.
Of Pope Ratzinger’s four "guardian angels", the "memores" Loredana is the backbone of the spacious papal kitchen, renovated in the summer of 2005 with metal color furniture and gray shelves.
The large marble table is where the dishes take shape that are served daily to the Pope and any guests.
Loredana is responsible for the shopping and maintains contact with the Vatican supermarket, as well as selects the vegetables that arrive every morning from the gardens of Castel Gandolfo.
Carmela works in the kitchen too and specializes in desserts (apple strudel, tarts, and fruit tiramisu), which are very good but light.
Carmela also takes care of the Pope’s room and his wardrobe.
Cristina is assigned instead to the papal chapel.
But from time to time also performs secretarial jobs.
Rossella, who just recently arrived in the Pope's house, replacing Emanuela Camagni, who died tragically in November 2010 in a car accident, takes care of the apartments of the two secretaries.
Moreover, she takes care of the storeroom represented by gifts of food and supervises its redistribution, since Ratzinger and his "family" cannot consume all that is given them.