Vatican New Years Eve Vesper Service
 

Has anyone attended the Vespers service New Years Eve in St Peters? Any information you can provide, for example how long it lasts etc. would be appreciated. Thanks.

I can't answer specifically about St. Peter's but Vespers usually runs about 30 minutes. Why is it important for you to know how long Vespers is? Do you have a rigid schedule?

I have a similar question.

At 6 pm on Dec 31, and on Nov 29 (when I'm proposing to be there), the Pope presides over the First Vespers of the following day. In both cases, the Vatican website reprints his sermon from the equivalent service last year: at least 15 mins and probably longer. There's also a tradition of chucking a Te Deum into the Dec 31 Vespers.

All of which sounds like at least an hour to me, and possibly more. Given it feels a wee bit dangerous to one's everlasting life to sprint out of St Peters to catch a restaurant or opera reservation while God's Representative on Earth is slowly processing down the aisle, I'm working on the assumption we won't exit the basilica before 7.30.

Short of sitting through the online videos of last year's services with a stopwatch, does anyone have a more accurate estimate?

In an ordinary parish setting, vespers, sermon, Te Deum and benediction will be around an hour in length. But being at St Peter's, with grander ceremonies and dimensions, I'd add another 30 minutes to it. Also it will take further 15-30 min to leave the basilica, depending on where you are sat. So if you estimate you won't be out of the ground much before 8 pm, you won't be too far out, I'd have thought.

Thanks to all who responded. I need to make dinner reservations following the service and needed an estimate as to what time services would be over in order to do so. I guess reservations for 9:00-9:30 would be in order. Flanner, would you post back about how long Vespers on Nov. 29 lasted? Again, thanks to all!

hi magista,

the other consideration is how early you'll need to get there.

When we went to easter mass in saint mark's, we got there 30 minutes early and that was only just early enough to get seats.

i would definitely reckon on a hour for st. peter's.

regards, ann

Assuming New Years Eve Verspers is identical to First Vespers of Advent, only they sing the Te Deum instead of the Magnificat:

- from start to finish, it's 45 minutes. Allow another 15 mins to wait for the Pope to leave and to get out of the front door. But you should be at the Colonnade an hour after Vespers starts
- Entrance to the pews starts 90 minutes before Vespers starts. If you take a seat in the nave, you get very close to the Pope for a few seconds (even the half-Jewish, half Scottish Presbyterian, all anti-Papist, Mrs F was gobsmacked to find herself 3 ft from him), but can't see any of the service. If you sit under the dome, you're very likely to be some distance from him, but see the service. There isn't much to see: the singing is exceptionally well transmitted throughout the Basilica, and sounds fine everywhere.
- Don't know about New Year's Eve, but the Advent Vespers aren't part of the Roman social scene, and there was no question of a shortage of seats. The area of the Basilica reserved for the congregation was only 80% occupied, and there was ample room for hundreds more pilgrims outside the pews. We arrived at the security scanners 30 mins before start time: even allowing for the brain-dead Japanese who couldn't understand why the cameras round their necks kept setting the alarm off, it took a total of 10 mins from getting into the security queue to sitting down in the Basilica
- Double check the time. No-one we spoke to at St Peters earlier knew when it was: the Swiss Guard we eventually were referred to gave us what turned out to be the wrong time.
- Vespers are in Latin: the instructions in the order of service you're given are in Italian. This might be the charitable explanation of why so few followed the instruction to the congregation to chant the responses in the psalms and join in the antiphons. How anyone can turn down an invitation to chant out loud in St Peter's is beyond me. As Mrs F put it: What IS it about Papes? Joining in the singing is the whole point of any decent Anglican service - and of services at the Catholic churches I attend back home.

Thanks for the detailed report, Flanner. As a Latin teacher I eagerly await the service in Latin; hearing it in St. Peter's makes it all the more special.