Coronavirus likely to cause first year without papal travel since 1979

Traveling abroad has become a staple of the modern papacy. In most years, the bishop of Rome takes an average of three or four voyages outside Italy, sometimes visiting a dozen countries in places across the globe.

As with many other things, the coronavirus outbreak has changed all that. In fact, it looks likely 2020 will be the first year the pope does not travel abroad since 1979.

The Vatican announced March 23 that Pope Francis' planned one-day visit to Malta, scheduled for May 31, has been indefinitely postponed. And another visit in the works — to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and Timor-Leste — is reportedly being put off until at least 2021.

Christopher Bellitto, a historian who has written extensively on the history of the papacy, said the Vatican's decision to suspend papal travel makes sense, given the worry that any crowds gathering to see Francis would spread the virus.

The historian mentioned that the modern role of popes traveling abroad only began with Pope Paul VI, who started the tradition by visiting the Holy Land in 1964.

"Papal travel outside Europe is a late-20th-century phenomenon," said Bellitto, a professor of history at Kean University in New Jersey. "So, a sensible suspension of travel like this isn't anything special ... and totally understandable in the circumstances."

Paul VI, who reigned from 1963 to 1978, only made nine visits abroad. The last was a nine-nation tour of the Middle East and Asia in 1970.