A Montevideo auction house hopes to get at least $40,000 for an iPad used by Pope Francis, with the proceeds to be donated to a Catholic high school in the northwestern Uruguayan city of Paysandu.
“There is interest not only in our country,” auctioneer Juan Castells told Efe. “Recently, we received calls from around the world. The buzz has been great.”
The device to be auctioned on April 14 was given by Pope Francis to Uruguayan priest Gonzalo Aemilius, who visited the Vatican.
The friendship between the two Catholic priests dates to when the future pope, Jorge Bergoglio, was archbishop of Buenos Aires and learned about an educational institution that Aemilius ran in Montevideo.
During Aemilius’s visit to the Vatican, Francis gave him his iPad “to do with whatever he considered appropriate,” Monica Olivelli, principal of the Liceo Francisco school, told Efe.
The new high school, promoted by three Paysandu families and local church authorities, is modeled on the one Aemilius runs in Montevideo and was inaugurated this year.
To help finance the project, Aemilius donated the iPad Francis gave him.
And today we celebrate...