a break from Sanders’ usual Eastern Airlines digs.

The traveling party was in the air less than two hours after Sanders walked off the debate stage.

Even upon his arrival eight hours later, Sanders was cutting it close: Bern Force One landed at the private terminal in Rome with just 52 minutes left on the clock before he was scheduled to speak at the Vatican conference.

Sanders made it in time to deliver a truncated, globalized version of his standard campaign address, soon after Ecuadorean President Rafael Correa addressed the audience in a small conference room surrounded by warm, deep-green courtyards and palatial, high-ceilinged rooms topped by intricately painted ceilings.

For hours Sanders was sequestered there, behind a placard reading “B. Sanders,” sitting and grinning next to Bolivia’s socialist (and anti-American) PresidentEvo Morales. Nestled in the inner sanctum of the Roman Catholic Church — among the vaulted ceilings, ancient crosses and religious icons — the most successful Jewish presidential candidate of all time couldn’t have looked more comfortable as he engaged in an academic conversation celebrating a quarter-century-old papal encyclical, with heavily accented English bouncing off the spare wood-paneled walls and marble floors.

He remained ensconced there for much of the evening and overnighted at the papal residence, while his family — an entourage of his children, their spouses and four grandchildren — toured the Eternal City and aides and reporters alike tucked into pasta at an Elizabeth Taylor-themed tourist trap. In the end, all Sanders saw of the flawless, blue-skied Roman days was on the motorcade rides to and