In which the Pope blesses my bar of hotel soap

Earlier this week, Liz’s deacon father pulled his Catholic strings and got her four tickets to see the Pope in Rome. She asked if I was interested, and I said something sophisticated like “Ooh ooh—pick me, pick MEEE!”

I may have zero connections to the Catholic Church (wait, my freshman year roommate was Catholic—does that count?) but I got super worked up about this Pope date.  What was I going to wear? What language should I speak to him in? (My Spanish is better than my Italian, but there would be less chance of me accidentally calling him “The Potato” if I spoke English.) What items should I bring to have blessed? Does a marble count as a sacred relic? What about a bar of soap you took from a hotel?

Fast forward to St. Peter’s Basilica, after we finally found Father Jim (Liz’s contact aka man with the plan):

tickets

We had our golden tickets and could finally enter the holy Willa Wonka factory! Except for one small problem: all of the security people kept shooing us away from the VIP area and back out into the giant sea of humanity that was wearing neon caps and waving Pope flags. After trying about six times, we were forced to accept our fate among them.

We tried to push as close as we could to one of the path barricades; we may be super far away from the stage, but he would make rounds in his Jeep and we would see him then.

People pressed against me on all sides, trying to force themselves ahead. “My daughter is up there,” one woman lied as she attempted to squeeze through a gap the size of a rabbit eyelash. The two Italian women in front of me actually started fighting, pushing each others’ shoulders as violently as they could in the limited space. The sun beat down relentlessly on our faces and seared into my eyes. I shedded the cardigan I had worn to be respectful; the Catholic aversion to shoulders is ridiculous anyway. The prong of an umbrella scratched the side of my face.

Sea of people in front of me

Only one more hour to go.

I squatted down to the level of cobblestone and bruised feet so I could breathe.  Father Jim continued on an endless rant about his life and research. After what seemed like forever, I heard a man shout “Eccolo! Eccolo!” (There he is!) and stood up, but I couldn’t see anything but chaos. The sea of people held their ipads, iphones, disposable kodaks, and snap-happys as high as they could over their heads. A man crowd-surfed his infant daughter up to the front to get kissed, but she didn’t make it in time. Pope Francis, when I saw him, was nothing but a glimpse of white cap on the other side of a stampeding zoo. When he passed, the woman directly behind me took to shouting “FRANCESCO!” as loud as she possibly could, as if he might hear her, turn his Pope-mobile around, and then venture into the crowd to find her. Then she lunged herself after him, sending me sprawling into the arms of short, dark-skinned priest. It was there, in frontal grind with that priest, that something broke in me. My eyes started to fill with tears, and I left the crowd to sit on the steps and listen to the Pope’s address from there.

 

Man trying to pass his baby up to the front

Father Jim took this for me because I was too short

Pope Francis spoke in Italian, but I found I could understand a good bit of what he was saying. It was particularly touching when he looked up from his notes and repeated “Tutti siamo eguale” (We are all equal). Simple, but nice to hear from the lips of a man whose mere presence inspires mass hysteria. He blessed us, our families, and all our sacred relics (yes, I have decided that marbles and hotel soaps do, in fact, count) and then disappeared.

 

The whole gane featuring silent brother and Father Jim

Before we left, Father Jim turned Steph’s plastic water bottle into holy water and sprinkled us with it. The rest of the day progressed in a comedy of errors that involved breaking fancy bottles of wine while running to catch our train, getting on the wrong train, and not realizing we were on aforementioned wrong train until its final stop.

So that was the Catholic misadventure. Now it’s time to talk about my more euphoric brush with Catholicism.

I mentioned a while back that I met a sister and she invited me to come jump on the convent trampoline whenever I wanted. Well, in typical Gabby form, I chickened out of going until our very last night in Tuscania, when I invited Liz and Dan to accompany me.

 

Sister Habib running back to class

We walked into the convent, and a young sister in blue (Habib from Egypt) saw us and giggled uncontrollably. When we asked her if we could jump on the trampoline, she giggled even more; then she led us through a library where nuns were taking their final exams and out into a beautiful yard starring, sure enough, a trampoline!

 

euphoria

Probably one of the top ten most euphoric experiences of my life, jumping on that convent trampoline. I felt like a little kid. It was also really fun to imagine nuns jumping on it. Gradually, news spread through the convent that there were three Americans jumping on the trampoline, and all the English speaking sisters started coming outside to meet us. Two of them offered to give us a tour.

 

nun chickens

They showed us their gardens, chickens, and pigs. We saw the laundry room where they handwash all their clothes. We said an Our Father in the chapel, poked around the “museum,” and studied a world map that marks all of their missions. Everywhere we went sisters would smile and fawn over us. I have never been around so many happy women in my life. Where had I gotten the idea that nuns were dour types?

 

pigs

The sisters at this convent come from all over the world. We met women from the Ukraine, South America, Australia… you name it. We also got to meet a ninety-year-old nun who hasn’t left the convent walls since she was fourteen! She says she wants to die there.

 

Liz meeting a laundry nun (they all have different vocations at the convent)

It was an incredibly eye opening and delightful experience. I’m so glad I finally got up to courage to go visit them, even if I did wait until my very last day in Tuscania to do it.

With our tour guides (and Dan's shadowy presence)

This post is long enough... I think I'll wait and tell you about Prague later. Stay gold, readerfolk!