I Saw the Pope Today
It was a Wednesday and I was out of bed at 6:00 a.m. I was leaving my apartment at 7:00. I don’t have class Wednesdays. So where was I going this early in the morning? Why, to see the pope of course! My friend Courtney and I had been wanting to attend a papal audience this semester, and they are held every Wednesday (when the pope’s in town). So, we went to the office near the Trevi Fountain to pick up the free tickets on Tuesday.
Then, the next morning, we met in St. Peter’s square to wait for the program to begin. After waiting in the metal-detector line and having my bag x-rayed, I was allowed to pass into the square. Courtney had arrived before me and snagged us two seats in the front section, and just a few seats away from the aisle that the pope comes down in his pope-mobile. So, I wondered around on my cell phone for about 10 minutes trying to locate her in the masses of people! Finally, I found her and took my seat.
The audience doesn’t begin until 10:30, so we had to wait, with the thousands of other people there, for a couple of hours. The energy was crazy and amazing! We were surrounded by tons of Catholics from all over the world, speaking all sorts of languages. Many were on pilgrimages or traveling with large church groups. As we all waited, there was some chanting (of the pope’s name: “Benedetto” and other forms of Benedict) and singing among the groups of people. Beneath the statues of Peter and Paul on each side of St. Peter’s basilica was a large screen on which they televised the event so everyone could see the pope or whoever was reading during the program. They also showed people from the audience from time to time, kind of like a sports game.
At 10:30, the pope finally emerged from the side of St. Peter’s in the pope-mobile! It wasn’t encased in glass though, because he has started riding in an open pope-mobile in order to be closer to the people. So, Pope Benedict XVI rode around through the aisles that went around and through the sections of people in the square. People went crazy, cheering and chanting and taking pictures as he went by. We were all standing on our chairs and trying to lean in as close as we could to the aisle to see. I held my camera way up above my head with the viewfinder pointing down at me so I could see, and I got a few seconds of footage of Pope Benedict as he went by my section, waving at everyone. It was quite exciting!
Then, the car proceeded up the ramp and under the covered area that had been set up in front of the basilica. The pope walked to his chair and began with a prayer, as people climbed out of their chairs and settled down. After the prayer, there was a reading, first in Italian, and then in about 6 other languages, by I think priests or bishops of some sort. I tried to make out what the reading was about when it was first read in Italian, but understood it a lot better when the representative of the English-speaking countries repeated it.
Pope Benedict then gave a homily in Italian. After that, the representatives of each language proceeded one at a time, announcing the groups of pilgrims from the countries that spoke their language (i.e. the English-speaking one announced all the groups present from the US, England, Scotland, Australia, etc.). As the groups’ names were called, they would stand and cheer as the pope would wave at them. Some groups even sang or performed a song with musical instruments. After the representative finished announcing, he turned it over to the pope, who welcomed everyone in that language, gave a short version of the homily, and then said there would be a blessing of any religious articles the audience brought at the end of the program. This was repeated with every representative of the 6 or 7 languages, along with the pope’s short homily and announcement. After this long process, the pope did the blessing in Italian and then everyone stood and said the Our Father (“Pater Noster”) in Latin, which was conveniently printed on the back of the papal audience tickets. For the blessing, I had brought a rosary and a medal of Mary, so it was cool to get a papal blessing on those! After the conclusion, we filed out with the other thousands of people, which was a crazy and busy process! I was glad I had attended it, though. I enjoyed seeing the pope and hearing him speak, as well as being surrounded by so many excited and passionate religious pilgrims.
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