Meeting the Pope (at a distance)

Byline--Gary Hatch.

July 8th the Pope held his last general audience before going to the Castle Gandolfo for the summer. (My kids thought this was a funny name--"Gandolfo." They imagined the Pope at a sandwich shop.) I had faxed the Vatican about getting tickets but hadn't heard back. We stopped by my office on July 4th to drop some stuff off on the way to my brother's house in Springville and found the return fax with the information for the tickets. So going to see the Pope was the first thing we did as a group on our first full day in Rome.

The meeting began at 10:30, but we had arranged to meet at 9:30. Looking back, we should have met even earlier. But it was difficult enough to get me and Carson out of bed and down to the Vatican offices that early after a poor night's sleep (and jet lagged). I went to the special "bronze doors" that are the entry to the Papal residence to pick up the tickets. The Swiss Guard directed me to an office where a stern-looking official handed me our pack of tickets. Then we got in a pretty long line. I probably should have had the students line up when we first got there and then got the tickets.

The line barely moved at all, so we stood for some time in the hot sun. In their Italian way, people would just walk up to the front of the line or cut in wherever there was a gap. We were surrounded by confused Northern Europeans who just couldn't bring themselves to cutting in line. Then as we got closer to 10:30, the line just turned into a mob of people pushing forward toward the security entrance. So we had to get a little "agressivo." We also learned that there were "blue tickets" like ours and "green tickets" that got people better seats. A combination of all of these elements meant that we were sitting in the back. At first everyone around us was standing on their seats, but then some stern-looking officials got everyone to sit down. The Pope was a small figure dressed in white at the front of the room. (We were in a conference room that probably sat 10,000 people.) But there were TV monitors in the back. He began by reading his statement in Italian. Then a French-speaking priest introduced the French-speaking visitors, and the Pope created them in French. After this, an English-speaking priest introduced the
English-speaking visitors, including us. We were introduced as "pilgrims from Brigham Young University." Then the Pope greeted everyone in English. This continued through German, Spanish, Polish, and Italian. The Spanish group took awhile because of some enthusiatic cheers and songs (usually led by the priest accompanying the group). The Pope ended with his apostolic blessing on the entire group.