Vatican Opens Visitor Center for St. Peter’s Basilica

The “Official Area,” as the Vatican is calling the center, is located about a five-minute walk from St. Peter’s Square at the far end of the main thoroughfare leading to the basilica — at the address Via della Conciliazione 3a.

The Vatican has partnered with two Italian organizations, the nonprofit BeHuman and the for-profit company Civita Mostre e Musei, to create the welcome center, which will also have priests, religious, and laypeople available for spiritual discussions, “listening, and empathy,” a press release said.

The Vatican also plans to use the visitor center to provide educational opportunities for children and teenagers, and will host school visits during the 2025 holy year.

In his Oct. 24 audience with Franciscan priests of the Friars Minor Conventual, who are entrusted with hearing confessions in St. Peter’s Basilica, Pope Francis said that while many people come to the Vatican “to pray at the tomb of the first of the apostles, to confirm their faith and their communion with the Church, to entrust dear intentions to the Lord… Others, even of different faiths, enter it as ‘tourists,’ attracted by the beauty, the history, the charm of the art.”

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“But in everyone there is one great quest, conscious or unconscious: the quest for God, beauty, and eternal goodness,” he said.

Hannah Brockhaus is Catholic News Agency's senior Rome correspondent. She grew up in Omaha, Nebraska, and has a degree in English from Truman State University in Missouri.