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The Vatican will hold its annual ceremony to swear in new recruits into the Swiss Guards, the world’s smallest army, on Wednesday 6 May.<\/p>\n
The pomp-filled event, held in the San Damaso courtyard of the Apostolic Palace, will see 28 new guards take a solemn oath of allegiance to the pope.<\/p>\n
A high-level delegation from Switzerland, including Swiss president Guy Parmelin and army and church representatives, will be present at the ceremony.<\/p>\n
The annual event commemorates 6 May 1527, when 147 Swiss Guards died protecting Pope Clement VII from the army of the Holy Roman Emperor.<\/p>\n
The pope fled via the 800-metre Passetto di Borgo passageway to the nearby refuge of Castel Sant’Angelo.<\/p>\n
Led by Commander Christoph Graf, the current Swiss Guards belong to\u00a0the world’s oldest standing army which celebrated its 520th anniversary on 22 January this year.<\/p>\n
The guards must be male and of Swiss nationality, as well as being Catholic, unmarried and aged between 19 and 30.<\/p>\n
They must also have undergone intensive Swiss military training and be a minimum height of 174 cm.<\/p>\n
In addition to protecting the pope, the army performs ceremonial duties and assists at Vatican functions, and is famous for its ancient halberd weapons and its blue, gold and red uniform.<\/p>\n
The soldiers\u00a0generally serve for between two and 25 years at the Vatican, in the service of the pope.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Photo credit: AM113 \/ Shutterstock.com.<\/em><\/span> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Swiss Guards celebrate 520 years in 2026. The Vatican will hold its annual ceremony to swear in new recruits into the Swiss Guards, the world’s smallest army, on Wednesday 6 May. The pomp-filled event, held in the San Damaso courtyard of the Apostolic Palace, will see 28 new guards take a solemn oath of allegiance<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":45798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[26103,26106,26102,2124],"class_list":["post-45797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-eventi","tag-guards","tag-swear","tag-swiss","tag-vatican"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=45797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/45797\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/45798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=45797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=45797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/polinex.cluster021.hosting.ovh.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=45797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}