VATICAN CITY: Forty new Swiss Guards were sworn in at the Vatican on Saturday, the latest halberd-clutching soldiers of the pope to serve a tradition stretching back 500 years.

A tourist magnet for centuries at the Vatican, the spectacularly dressed Swiss Guards swear to sacrifice themselves if necessary for the pope.“There are two ways of defending the pope: with weapons and with faith,” says their commander, Christoph Graf, ahead of the swearing-in of the 40 guards (23 German-speaking Swiss, 13 French-speaking and four Italian-speaking).

Not anyone can be a Swiss Guard. Applicants have to be a practising Roman Catholic, Swiss, single, between 19 and 30 years old and at least 1.74 metres tall.

The 40 new Swiss Guards will be joining an army created in 1506 when Pope Julius II recruited the supposedly invincible mercenaries for his protection.

The swearing-in ceremony takes place on May 6 — a bloody date in the history of the Swiss Guards when 147 of them died during the 1527 Sack of Rome.

The recruits don the famous yellow, blue and red uniform and a metal helmet with ostrich plummage.

However, being a Swiss Guard is an extremely physically demanding job, involving long periods of standing guard motionless.

Pascal Burch, a 21-year-old German-speaking recent recruit, said “the pain begins first in the knees, then the feet start to hurt and then the shoulders”.

Published in Dawn, May 7th, 2017