Papa Francesco

In Rome, everyone simply loves Pope Francis. The JFRC arranged for us to attend a papal audience last Wednesday, so all classes were cancelled and we instead got up early to make our way to the Vatican and contribute our own enthusiasm for the pope. The actual audience started at 10:30; we got there at around 8:30 and it was already mobbed with people. Luckily, we were still early enough to get a good seat near the front - we just had to kill two hours of time waiting for everyone else to file in.


Pope Francis is hugely popular. According to one of the priests here at JFRC,it was estimated that 50,000 people were in attendance for this audience alone. Which I could actually believe because the crowd was just enormous. If anyone hasn't seen this yet, there's an interesting interview with the pope which you can find here.

Before the audience began, the names of particular groups were read, and the JFRC got a special mention, which was pretty cool. We cheered loudly like boisterous Americans when it happened.
While more names were being read in different languages, the pope came out and the crowd went wild! I think perhaps a better name for the papal audience would be papal fan club or something. The pope walked around the crowd for a while waving to everyone, shaking hands, kissing babies (you know, the typical pope duties) and then returned to the front of the square where a short gospel was read in several languages. Pope Francis then said a homily in Italian (which I actually understood the gist of without translation, so that was encouraging). The Our Father was sung in Latin and then the pope gave a blessing to everyone in attendance, which also extends to families (so family, you were all blessed by the pope this past week).

Look! There he is!!

Overall, I was really glad that the Rome Center arranged for us to go - I don't think I'd have been able to skip classes otherwise, and it was definitely an experience to have in Rome! Father Albert, the priest in charge of the campus ministry at JFRC, is also arranging to get tickets for a few papal masses at St. Peter's, so if I get to go to one of those, maybe I'll get another chance to see the pope, albeit in a similar mob of people.

I've been busy busy this past week; I've got a couple tests coming up before the fall break, but I'm hoping to update more on the happenings of these past few days soon. I have some interesting stories to tell, including finding a secret bakery in Rome, getting evacuated from a metro train, and doing my first school visit for my research! Stay tuned...