The plot next to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery now follows principles of care for creation set out in Laudato Si’.
Inside the Vatican Gardens, next to the Mater Ecclesiae monastery where Benedict XVI spent his last years, there is a vegetable garden of about 400 square meters (0.1 acres) divided into four cultivation zones. It has been producing food for the papal table since the 13th century. As Vatican News reported, it is now fully organic.
The garden traces its origins to Pope Nicholas III Orsini, who transferred the papal residence from the Lateran to the Vatican between 1277 and 1280 and immediately commissioned the creation of a fruit garden and a viridarium within the new walls. Eight centuries later, the same plot is still producing food.
The transition to fully organic management means production follows the natural rhythms of the soil and the seasons. Certified pelletized fertilizer, selected according to the season and the needs of each plant, has replaced the manure previously brought from the Pontifical Villas at Castel Gandolfo. Crop rotation preserves soil fertility. Agronomic practices keep pests below damaging levels. Every intervention requiring authorization is recorded in a field notebook. Irrigation remains entirely manual.
The daily care falls to Gilberto Bianchi, a gardener who has worked in the Vatican Gardens for more than two decades, assisted by young co-workers to whom he is gradually passing on his accumulated knowledge — small everyday gestures preserved in the same way that knowledge passed from monastery to monastery in earlier centuries. The contemplative nuns of the Mater Ecclesiae community indicate which crops are needed, taking into account the season and what the land can offer at any given moment.
The cultivation calendar follows the seasons closely. Current crops include fresh garlic, basil, chili peppers — among them a Peruvian variety of particular intensity — tomatoes, aubergines, courgettes, citrus fruits, and pumpkins. This year, the sisters requested the planting of the first kiwi plants. Part of the harvest has long been donated to charitable organizations, among them the Casa Dono di Maria.
The change aligns explicitly with Laudato Si' and with the position Leo XIV expressed last November when addressing Italian agronomists and forestry professionals. “The earth is not a possession, but a gift,” the Pope said. “Those who cultivate it with respect and wisdom participate in God’s creative work.”
The monastery next to the garden has its own layered history. Built between 1992 and 1994 on the initiative of John Paul II to house a rotating contemplative community dedicated to prayer for the pope, it became Benedict XVI’s private residence after his resignation in 2013 until his death in 2022. Benedict was known to walk through the garden regularly during his moments of prayer and study. In 2023 it returned to its original function as a monastery for contemplative nuns.
The organic garden is a small thing — 400 square meters, tended by one experienced gardener and a handful of collaborators, producing seasonal vegetables for a monastery and a papal table. It is also a concrete expression of the stewardship the Catholic tradition has always understood to be part of the human vocation: to cultivate the earth with care, and to give back what is taken.
