# whereisthepope.com

> Real-time multilingual tracker of Pope Leo XIV's location, daily public agenda,
> apostolic journeys, scripture of the day, and the liturgical calendar.
> Also publishes evergreen Catholic pilgrimage guides for Rome & Vatican,
> the Holy Land, and Fátima, with operator comparisons and booking links.
> Built on Cloudflare's edge (Workers + D1 + R2 + Pages, Next.js 15).
> The Pope's calendar is refreshed every 30 minutes from the official Vatican
> calendar feed; news articles are aggregated from the Holy See and major
> Catholic newsrooms.

## About the Pope

Pope Leo XIV (Robert Francis Prevost), elected May 8, 2025. First American pope.
Augustinian friar from Chicago. Pope Francis died in April 2025; Leo XIV is his
direct successor.

## Site map (canonical, per locale)

The site renders 12 languages. Replace `{lang}` with one of:
`en`, `pt`, `es`, `it`, `fr`, `fil`, `pl`, `de`, `ar`, `ln`, `sw`, `la`.

- Homepage — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}`
  Hero (current city + flag), interactive map, today's agenda or live trip
  status, Word of the Day, Liturgical Day, latest news, journey selector.
- Apostolic journey — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/trip/{trip-id}`
  Itinerary, country sections, FAQ, JSON-LD schema. Current trip ids:
  `turkey-lebanon-2025`, `monaco-2026`, `africa-2026`, `spain-2026`.
- News listing — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/news`
- News article — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/news/{slug}`
- Guides listing — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/guides`
- Guide article — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/guides/{slug}`
- Pilgrimages listing — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/pilgrimages`
  Overview of the three main Catholic pilgrimage destinations.
- Pilgrimage guide — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/pilgrimages/{slug}`
  Slug values: `rome-vatican`, `holy-land`, `fatima`.
  Each page covers: why pilgrims go, operator comparison (3 tour operators with
  prices from / person), what to expect, top sacred sites, practical tips, FAQ.
  Current slugs and starting prices: rome-vatican ($2,200), holy-land ($2,800),
  fatima ($1,800).

## Discovery feeds

- Sitemap                 — `https://whereisthepope.com/sitemap.xml`
- Google News sitemap     — `https://whereisthepope.com/news-sitemap.xml`
- RSS (English, default)  — `https://whereisthepope.com/feed.xml`
- RSS (per language)      — `https://whereisthepope.com/{lang}/feed.xml`

## Public read-only API

CORS-enabled JSON, no auth, served from a Cloudflare Worker.
Base URL: `https://whereisthepope-api.luisparadapereira.workers.dev`

| Endpoint                                          | Description |
|---|---|
| `GET /api/current?lang={lang}`                    | Current papal location: city, country, flag, lat/lng, trip context. Falls back to Vatican City when no live journey. |
| `GET /api/trips?lang={lang}`                      | All apostolic journeys with status (`past`/`live`/`future`), dates, countries, cities, km. |
| `GET /api/trip/{id}?lang={lang}`                  | Single journey: cities + events + per-country history and visit summary. |
| `GET /api/agenda?date={YYYY-MM-DD}&lang={lang}`   | Pope's public agenda for a UTC day (defaults to today). Source: vatican.va calendar. |
| `GET /api/scripture/today?lang={lang}`            | Daily verse + reflection. |
| `GET /api/liturgical/today?lang={lang}`           | Today's feast: name, type, liturgical colour, backstory. |
| `GET /api/news?language={bcp47}&kind=news\|guides&page={n}` | Editorial articles with translations. |

## Update cadence

- Pope's location and agenda — every 30 minutes (cron Worker scrapes vatican.va).
- News articles — multiple times per day from RSS, translated into all 12
  site languages by the same pipeline that publishes the original.
- Daily scripture + liturgical day — generated once per UTC day.

## Data sources

- Pope's calendar — Holy See, `vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/events/`
  (per-month JSON feed `/content/vaticanevents/en/{year}/{month}.events.leo-xiv.js`).
- Vatican News editorial — `vaticannews.va`.
- Other Catholic newsrooms — Catholic News Agency, Crux, OSV News, Zenit,
  The Catholic Herald, The Pillar.

## Editorial integrity

- Articles preserve the verb tense and time framing of the source — completed
  events are in past tense, upcoming ones in future tense, never inverted.
- Source URLs are stored on every article; the publication date displayed on
  each story is the source's `article:published_time` (or RSS `pubDate`),
  not the time the rewrite was synthesised.
- Articles are written under a strict no-hallucination guard: facts not in
  the source are omitted rather than invented.

## Crawler / AI policy

All major search engines are allowed. Anthropic / Claude crawlers are
explicitly allowed. OpenAI, Google-Extended, Perplexity, Common Crawl,
ByteDance, Meta, Apple AI, and other AI-training crawlers are blocked
in `robots.txt`. Internal `/api/*` routes are disallowed for everyone.

## Languages

English (en), Portuguese (pt, pt-PT), Spanish (es), Italian (it), French (fr),
Filipino (fil), Polish (pl), German (de), Arabic (ar), Lingála (ln),
Kiswahili (sw), Latin (la).

## Contact

info@lacunae.media — Lacunae Media (publisher)