Pope Travels: White Sausage and Papal Jeeves

April 15, 2008 — -- Please do NOT bring Pope Benedict XVI any white sausage -- that Bavarian delicacy of minced veal and fresh pork that's traditional in his native Germany.

Papal aides from recent trips tell ABC News that Benedict has received Bavarian white sausages as gifts from well-meaning folks when he's traveled, but that it's a little awkward to carry back to Rome.

Not that the pope packs his own bags. There's a papal valet -- a typical butler, quiet and reserved. He's a proper papal Jeeves, seen and not heard but prodigiously observant.

As journalists traveling on the plane with the pope, we sometimes spot the butler moving quietly amid the entourage of about 30 Vatican staff -- secretaries, priests and a few cardinals traveling with the pope. He embodies the discretion of all true butlers, rarely speaking in social situations.

The valet's choice of clothes when he packs for his boss remains uncomplicated; the pope has but one public outfit -- the white one.

Vatican officials tell reporters that the answer to one of the most common questions about the pontiff has not changed in decades: Under that famous white cassock, Benedict wears normal slacks and a dress shirt (no tie) … just as his predecessor did, as our ABC News cameras were able to record when filming Pope John Paul II at work in his private apartment.

So just one or two normal suitcases is all the papal valet ever needs to include among the valises in the belly of the papal plane.

"Benedict really is a man of genuine humility," said one cardinal long known to this reporter, but who insists on anonymity, "but he is also a man of discerning taste -- in music and indeed in clothes."

The cardinal was reflecting on reports that Benedict had chosen new tailors in Rome, no longer shopping exclusively at the one shop known to clothe popes throughout the last century.

Wearing normal business suits and always close around the pope when he travels are four Swiss Guards -- and possibly more, but it's a secret.

They wear colorful yellow and blue Renaissance costumes when standing guard in Vatican portals, but on the road they blend into the crowd like the highly trained modern security experts they are, two-way radios hidden in their suits along with never-seen guns and other latest weaponry.