Pope Francis scripted history on the third day of his South American trip as he performed a wedding ceremony for two flight attendants on board a plane in Chile.
The couple — Paula Podest Ruiz (39) and Carlos Ciuffardi Elorriga (41) — reached the Pope to seek his blessings and surprisingly Francis asked them if they had been married in the church too. They had been married earlier in a civil service, but they couldn’t conduct a ceremony in their church in Santiago as the church was damaged in the 2010 earthquake.
After coming to know about the couple’s situation, Francis, reportedly, told the duo that he will read out the vows for them, to which the couple readily agreed.
Soon the ceremony was performed by the Pope at an altitude of 36,000 feet (11,000 meters) on the short flight from Santiago to the city of Iquique in northern Chile.
According to the reports, the couple signed a handwritten marriage certificate after the ceremony and the certificate had Pope’s signature ‘Francis’.
The Pope has been travelling to Iquique to celebrate an open-air mass on the shores of the Pacific.