Papal Audience

So, if you’ve been living under a rock for the past four days, THE POPE IS RESIGNING! With that said, there’s gonna be some cool stuff going on in Rome over the next two or three weeks, and I’m so lucky that I’m going to be here for it all. To put things into perspective, this hasn’t happened in 600 years. In fact, the pope who most recently resigned was Pope Gregory XII in 1415, in the midst of crisis. His resignation helped to end the Great Western Schism, in which more than one person was claiming the title to the papacy.

Benedict will resign officially on February 28^th, and a new pope will hopefully be elected soon after. The process of electing a new pope is pretty intense, and the first rules state that a person must be elected with a 2/3 plus 1 majority, but if after a certain point that fails to work, more votes take place over that afternoon and into the following days (at which point black smoke comes out of the Vatican to indicate each time a pope is not elected with a new vote). Finally, when white smoke instead appears, this means the new pope has elected, aka get my butt across town to witness this momentous occasion. The metro that day better not mess me up…

Crack of dawn

Anyway, instead of our normal site visit to a church today, we actually asked Professor Gondreau a few days ago if he could attempt to secure us tickets to the papal audience instead. He was definitely for that, and it would be a cool moment to witness considering it would be his first public appearance since announcing his resignation. He was able to get the tickets, so we woke up at the crack of dawn to get over to the Vatican to get good seats!

The metro was actually more packed than we thought it would be, which was very inconvenient considering we actually had important places to be, people to see. And of course once we got to the Vatican, we went through the wrong line of security (this time I didn’t get stopped three times; I was proactive) and had to walk back out and around the square. We heard a ton of voices and got a little nervous that perhaps we were really late, but the lines weren’t even open yet and there wasn’t a massive crowd of people yet. Luckily, it was around 8:15 am when we got to the line, and people were just starting to be let through so we didn’t have to wait too long. We actually got pretty good seats, considering there were estimated to be about 8,000 people in attendance.

German band

We ended up waiting for over an hour and half because we had gotten there so early, but were entertained for the most part by the groups that had come from around the world that were scattered about throughout the audience. Directly to our left was an elementary school choir that had come from somewhere else in Italy, in the front of us was what we think a French high school choir, and then behind us was a singing group from the pope’s hometown in Germany. Their music was by far my favorite, because it was happy and upbeat and they had a whole band!

We also became friendly with some nuns sitting behind us, and learned that they were Missionaries of Charity, an order started by Mother Teresa of Calcutta. They told us that they were taking their final vows to officially become nuns in the coming weeks; the whole process takes ten years! Their “mother” was sitting next to them, and invited us to come visit them on Sunday at 5 pm for Adoration, which I think Anna and I are definitely going to go to. When we asked what time their mass was, they told us that we probably wouldn’t want to come to that one because it was at 6 am! They were so friendly, and invited us to come visit them anytime. We also got into a conversation with the priests in front of us, who were from Argentina and barely spoke any English. They were soo friendly though, and talked to us about church in the States. Seated in front of him was another very young priest, and after our conversation with the Argentinians, he interjected us, saying he overheard that we went to Providence College. He studied and Notre Dame, and he told us that they loved PC! He also said that while Notre Dame was in the midst of certain controversies, the administration had repeatedly said that they wanted to be more like Providence College (I think they meant in a theological way, obviously). He was really nice, and he gave us all the times for masses at an English church.

The pope came out at exactly 10:30 am, and everyone gave him a standing ovation. He read off an Ash Wednesday blessing in a few different languages, and a high school from New Orleans stood up to sing when he blessed the Americans. Then, the little kids in front of us sang, and the pope was so sweet and blessed them, too, saying that music was one of the things that gave him the most joy in life. After all of the proceedings, everyone gave him a standing ovation again and chanted ,”Viva la papa!” That kind of made me sad.

The Vatican Square

I didn’t realize at first that this had been his first public appearance since announcing his resignation. All in all it was a great experience, and I can't believe that we might be some of the last people to see the pope before he gives up his position. Pretty cool that we were there to witness it!