The French language group organized the Mass in the Main Chapel this morning. As organized as they always are, there was a complete program prepared. Even though the homily by Fr. Adriano was short, we still didn't get to breakfast until 7:50 AM, and the buses were leaving at 8:30 sharp. At the last minute, we found out that we should have our name tags in order to get in, so there was a furious hunt for name tags before boarding the buses.Traffic in Rome at this time of the morning is crazy. It's gridlock all around, or so it seems. If we had taken the Metro, we probably would have gotten to the Vatican faster. At one point, the bus was blocked by a car whose owner had put on his flashing lights while he went across to the street to conduct some sort of business. It was only after some five minutes of continuous honking of horns that he came out and moved the car out of the way.
The bus parked some distance from the piazza and we walked to the already crowded outside viewing stands. We knew the general placement of our assigned seats and made our way to that area of the piazza, moving through a number of guides, guards, attendants, and police. Each time we had to explain who we were and where we were going. Once we got to our places we found out that we had better seats than we had been assigned. Apparently, one of the people overseeing the placement of seats spoke with the early arrivals and said that he had graduated from one of our schools. Then he promptly changed our seats to better ones, so that now instead of being seated behind the pope, we would be in front of him. Thank you very much.
The Brothers who had arrived earlier had saved the other seats for us, and I got a good spot near the front of the group. For the next hour, we were taking lots of photographs of one another and of the assembling crowd in the piazza. The official ushers were dressed up quite formally, and they knew their jobs well. Their eagle eyes would immediately pick out anyone trying to sneak into a better seat and would gently, but persistently, move them away. Doing this every week with people who are inevitably quite excited and who will recite any reason to get a better seat has probably made them quite resistant to most appeals for mercy.
Then the pope appeared in his pope-mobile, to great shouts and cheering of course. He made his way around the entire piazza, going by a circuitous route that reached to the very edges of the crowd. Then it was back to the front and up the steps - in the pope-mobile - until he reached the seating area. There he got out and went to his chair. The event began with a prayer and a reading, and then everyone was forced to sit down and calm down. One South American priest who had been standing in our area, and in a good spot, hoping to stay there throughout, suddenly didn't have a seat and stood out like a sore thumb. He tried to sit in the area in front of us (where there were some empty seats, but these were for the truly important) but the ushers found him and escorted him away, paying no mind to his softly spoken pitying appeals for mercy and consideration - as the pope began his opening address.For the next 40 minutes or so we listened to a series of introductions of various groups in the crowd - a session in each of a number of languages (Italian, Spanish, English, French, Polish, and some others) - followed by a short response by the pope in that language. When a group was named, there would be great shout from somewhere in piazza and the pope would gesture appreciatively in that direction. Everyone from the altar servers at St. Mary Immaculate Church in Wabash, Wisconsin (I'm making up the name) to the seminarians from somewhere in Poland was mentioned. The Brothers were the lead on the program, and the pope had some special words to say to us - mostly about living our religious life with joy, as far as I could tell. He was courteous to us, but I don't think that he really knows us or our charism.
Apparently, some months back, he referred to St. Don Bosco as the Patron of Teachers - which of course is not the case. Don Bosco is the Patron of Youth and De La Salle is the Patron of Teachers. But never mind. He's the pope; give him a break.Several bands played music when they were introduced or choirs sang songs. The Brothers just applauded politely when our name was called, unlike the Polish seminarians who could hardly be contained in their enthusiasm, both singing and breaking out in some Polish cheer for the pope.
As the pope neared the end of his various talks, a group of secret-service types moved in front of our area of the observation platform. They formed a blockade of the empty chairs in the section in front of us and warned us not to move forward when the pope came to barricade that was located about 10 feet in front of us. The group in the section in front of us, which included Br. Alvaro and other truly important people, would be able to greet the Holy Father individually, but we had to be satisfied with simply watching. Somehow, folks from behind us had managed to weasel their way up front, so that we had quite a crowd pushing against us from the back.
Then Benedict made his way over to our side and spent a good amount of time greeting the various individuals who were assembled there. For each one, he took the time to listen and to speak for a while, undoubtedly realizing how important those moments were for the people involved. For our part, we just kept taking pictures as he moved along the line. It started to rain a little, and a white umbrellas quickly appeared to keep him dry, but that stopped after about five minutes. When I looked back over the piazza, I noticed that 80% of the people there had departed. Now that you couldn't see the pope anymore from the piazza, most of those attending had decided to get on with their day.The Brothers left as well but I stuck around for a while, observing the people (tourists, guards, priests, bishops, etc.) as much as the pope himself. Then I found out that our section was now closed off; we couldn't leave even if we had wanted to - security kinds of things. So I made the best of it and took some more pictures. When the pope did leave, he rode out in his pope-mobile to the side entrace of St. Peter's, where a large group of elderly and ill had gathered in their wheel chairs. He slowly made his way past them, touching and blessing as he went.
Just before going into the side entrance, he waved in the direction of the group where I was standing, and I took a picture that looks as if he's waving at the camera that I'm holding to take a picture of myself and him in the background. I think it's a kind of cool shot.Once he left, everyone broke away and I made my way to the Salvatorian Generalate which was located just a block down the main drag from St. Peter's. It's a prime location, to be sure. I was an hour late for the lunch that Fr. Dennis Thiessen had invited me to, but the folks at the hotel that the Salvatorians have there were able to contact Dennis and I joined the community for the lunch that was already going on. Afterwards, Dennis gave me a tour of the house - a 15th century house of one a cardinal who had been at the Council of Trent - showing me the chapel of their
Founder, their library, and so on. One of the highlights was their terrace on the roof, which overlooks St. Peter's and from which you get a clear shot of the Pope's window from where he does his Sunday noon blessing. Before the Vatican put a large building (offices and housing) in the way, you could see right into St. Peter's square from the roof, Dennis told me. On the top floor of that building lives Cardinal Levada. Other cardinals also live in that building and in other buildings in the immediate area.Afterwards, I stopped by the Vatican bookstore to pick up some books that others had asked me to purchase and then made my way back to the Motherhouse via Bus 46. It was raining by the time I'd returned and I thought that that would dampen the activities planned for the evening. I caught the 5 PM Aula Magna session on the report from the Young Brothers and then did some work in the office until dinner was to begin.
Dinner tonight was an outside affair featuring Italian food, etc., and prepared by Roch and Massimo and Br. Andrea from the school next door. It was a very nice affair, with lots of bread and cheese and sausage and pork (I didn't have the pork - don't care for it much). The Brothers were in fine spirits after all of our weeks together and now that some of the major items a
re out of the way. To top off the evening, there were fireworks from the roof of the B Block building, behind which this outdoor dinner was held. A little later still, a group went to Blue Ice for some gelato to top off the evening.So today was a very full day, but also quite rewarding and enjoyable on lots of levels. It's too bad that I didn't get to greet the Holy Father personally, but we were 15 feet away from him and were able to see him for a good amount of time, which is much more than most of the many thousands of people who were there today.
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More pictures from today at http://picasaweb.google.com/gvangrie/ItalyMay30
