I spent the first week of April travelling through Italy with three of my friends from the program. It just so happened that our spring break was during Easter, and it just so happened even more that I was in Rome for Easter Sunday. We got to Rome late Thursday night and were staying until Sunday afternoon, which meant we had some time to kill Sunday morning. The Vatican puts on a big show for Easter and we found out that the Pope would be speaking to the crowd in St. Peter's Square on Sunday morning. We figured that the chance to see the Pope speak on Easter doesn't come very often, so we decided to head over to the Vatican and see what would happen.
The obelisk in the square has a compass sort of set up with each direction marked on the ground. This one points straight to the Basilica.
This photo from Saturday shows where the expensive seats are.
That's the obelisk I was writing about a second ago.
It rained a lot on Sunday morning. Not great. However, we did get a pretty good place to stand. We actually had some pretty good luck. The Swiss Guard had informed us that we would need to get there around 7 am in order to see the Pope. Well we didn't do that. We took the packed metro over to the Vatican City and there were people everywhere. The streets were throttled and we just sort of followed the crowd in the general direction of the square. We arrived at around 10 and I had been thinking we wouldn't even get close to being able to see him. Well we got there and the square was only about half full. Maybe the rain helped us out with that. Once in the square, we could see these large projector screens and hear the Mass that was going on inside the Basilica.
Apparently these Easter songs are pretty common.
After a little over an hour of waiting, the Pope and his entourage came outside and they gave a Mass to the people in the fancy seats. We could see it happening from all the way in the back. And wouldn't you know it, the second he came out is stopped raining. Crazy. And then the Pope did something really cool. He hopped in his Popemobile and drove through the middle of the crowd. He zigzagged around and got within 20 yards of us.
After the ride, he and some other important people went upstairs to a balcony that overlooks the crowd. From there, he proceeded to address the crowd in Italian. I don't know a lick of Italian, but the words like hope and love are pretty similar to the Spanish ones, so I could sort of follow along. He also talked about conflicts in Africa and Syria.
After his message he blessed the crowd. Is being blessed by the Pope the kind of thing you can put on a resume? It should be. It felt a little like that scene from O Bother, Where art Thou? where Delmar gets baptized in the river and all of his sins are warshed away. It was pretty incredible to see all the grandeur and it was an unforgettable experience. While Florence was my favorite city, my time in Rome was capped off well.
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