CNS PHOTO | L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA REUTERS Pope Francis fits in with the crowd during a week-long Lenten retreat with senior members of the Roman Curia in Ariccia, Italy, March 9.

VATICAN CITY – Less than a week before he was to take top Vatican officials and head out of town for a week-long Lenten retreat, Pope Francis said retreats should renew the faith of participants, transforming their ministry and their relationships with others.

"Those who live a retreat in an authentic way," the pope said, "experience the attraction and fascination of God and return renewed and transfigured in their daily lives, their ministry and their relationships."

The pope met March 3 with an Italian federation of spiritual directors and those who run retreat houses throughout the country, offering Christians "space and time to listen intensely to the word of God in silence and in prayer."

CNS PHOTO | L'OSSERVATORE ROMANO VIA REUTERS Pope Francis arrives for a weeklong Lenten retreat in Ariccia, near Rome, March 9

Pope Francis and senior members of the Roman Curia began their annual Lenten retreat March 9.

The Vatican had announced in October that rather than holding the daily Lenten prayers and meditations in the Vatican, Pope Francis had decided the retreat would be at the Pauline Fathers' retreat and conference centre in Ariccia, a town about 32 kms southeast of Rome.

The Vatican press office distributed copies of the 20th annotation from the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits.

The note encourages people making a retreat to leave their home, their office and "all earthly care" to concentrate only on their prayer and meditation.

"The more our soul finds itself alone and isolated, the more apt it makes itself to approach and to reach its Creator and Lord, and the more it so approaches him, the more it disposes itself to receive graces and gifts from his divine and sovereign goodness," the annotation says.

In an interview published March 5 by the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Pope Francis said he thought it was necessary to give the annual retreat more importance.

"Everyone has a right to spend five days in silence and meditation," he said. When the retreat was at the Vatican, many participants would listen to the talks, then return to their offices and work.

Those making the retreat -including the pope – left the Vatican at 4 p.m. March 9 and travelled to Ariccia by bus.

Msgr. Angelo De Donatis, a popular spiritual director and pastor of a parish in Rome, was leading the retreat on the theme The Purification of the Heart.

On the final day, March 14, the retreatants will leave Ariccia to return to the Vatican on the bus at 10:30 a.m.