Pasqua al Vaticano

Alright, it's the one you all have been waiting for: all about Easter mass at the Vatican!! What an incredible experience, even though I'm not Catholic and I didn't know what was going on for some parts. Just to be there amongst all those people, it really is indescribable. But I'll try...

I'm going to start off with a short synopsis of Good Friday, which we celebrated by trying to attend the Way of the Cross (Via Crucis) presentation at the Colosseo. It was at around 9, so Megan, Mary and I left a little after 8 and walked all the way to the Colosseo, along with countless other people. Our tactic was to follow the nuns to ensure a decent spot. And we ended up crammed up against a gate at some point along the Colosseo with no idea of what was going on ahead of us. When we realized there was nothing but more people up there, we turned around and made it to a less crowed spot. Bad idea, we couldn't see anything--which we later found out was only the Pope sitting there while different people read the various stations of the Cross in all sorts of languages. We left half way through, but at least I got to see the Colosseo at night! Beautiful!Saturday we went "shopping" which entailed walking all around our side of Rome looking at things but not buying anything. There was a soccer match happening so every Italian was glued to a tv or radio. It was Roma vs. Lazio, major major rivals, think like UW vs. WSU but way more intense. Lazio had a major upset and won 4 to 2. I really wanted to go, but we couldn't find tickets for under 120 euro.

Sunday morning started off very interesting. I had a horrible dream that when everyone in the program was leaving Rome to go south, I forgot about going south and went home instead. I didn't realize until 2 days later that I was supposed to still be in Italy, and began to panic. I woke up feeling all frenzied, only to realize my alarm hadn't gone off. We were supposed to leave at 7:30, and I woke up at 7:19. I have never gotten ready so quickly. We were out the door by 7:45 but I promise I was all set at 7:35! Luckily everyone else was late too, and ultimately we had no need to get to the Vatican so early.

The "security" gates were supposed to open at 8:30 am according to our tickets, and the mass started at 10:15. After going to the Way of the Cross and seeing the crowds, we planed on the Vatican lines being insane. Not so. There were maybe a few hundred people haphazardly in a few lines, and we got there just as they started to let people in. The "security" that I had read about online was only a few guys looking inside purses as you entered, they didn't even check for tickets. We were joking about how someone dressed as a nun could easily sneak some device in... yeah this is the kind of stuff we come up with. We decided to have a little dignity once inside the square and not run like everyone else, and our seats ended up fantastic anyways. Our friend Christina had saved about 5 or 6 around her because she got there way earlier to meet her cousin. We sat with her because she had made the effort to save us these seats, but about 4 girls decided to try and get seats closer up, which they did. However, we were much closer to the Pope as he made his entrance.After a few marching bands paraded past, the Swiss Guards marched followed by the Pope. As the guards were walking, my friend Sara started singing Ow Ee Ow song from the Wizard of Oz, from the scene with the witch's scary army. Thought that was too funny. Finally il Papa came by, and was waving and blessing and doing his Pope business. Then some woman across from us basically threw her baby at him, and Pope Benny stroked the kids face. Then the mother grabbed his hand off her kid and puts it on her own face. Got it all on video :)

The mass lasted about 2.5 hours, and we followed along with this little booklet they gave us when we got our seats. The 'program' was 60 pages long! It had everything that would be said written out, most of it in Latin, and then to the right of all text was the translation in Italian. It was like a double challenge to try and keep up, but also sometimes glance at the Italian and see if I could understand it. We also tried to sing all the parts we were supposed to sing, and I'm pretty sure that was kind of painful to listen to. What was very interesting about the mass was how they incorporated all types of languages; for different readings of scripture, they had people read each one in a different language. They even included Arabic and Hebrew, which caught my attention.

Half way through they offered communion, which I didn't take because I know the Catholics do it pretty ritually and I didn't want to mess it up. Then more singing, more reading, etc and it was just about over. I was not bored for the entire 2+ hours, in fact I really enjoyed it. After the actual mass was finished, the pope made his way up to his balcony to read a little speech and wish everyone a happy Easter. While we waited for him to climb up to the balcony, the woman in front of us asked me to take pictures of her and her friends. She then asked if I was Italian, and we told her no, we're American. She then proceeds to yell "OOH! I looooooove America!" in her Barcelonian accent. She tells me about how she loves New York (we don't know why anyone would love America after going to NY...) and how she has a big American flag at home. Then she told me, like it was a secret, that she had an American flag in her desk at work too--she then adds, "and I work at the Spanish Parliament! ;)"

Anyways, Pope Benny's speech was all in Italian, and I was pretty proud that I could pick up on some of what he was saying. The major points were (I believe) calls to end the suffering and hunger in Africa, a Palestinian-Israeli peace, hope in these times, and that's all I remember. Then he wished us Buona Pasqua, and continued to wish Happy Easter in at least 30 different languages! Except he's a German pope so everything he said had a little tinge of German in it. We couldn't understand him when he said it in English, we thought he had skipped it!So that was it. You had to be there to understand how amazing it was, in words it loses its magic. Once we finally made it out of the crowds and back to our apt, I proceeded to stuff my face with a fairly large lunch, and then took a 3 hour nap. I didn't mean to, I really meant to use the day better, but we were all exhausted. Quite a morning. Once we all woke up, we made a communal Easter dinner of chicken, peas, and potatoes, and I brought some spumante (Italian sparkling, sweet wine) for everyone. Then we topped it off with a cake we bought a few days earlier for the occasion. However, what we thought was a chocolate cake was actually cake filled with some sort of fruit jelly and soaked in some sort of coffee/brandy? Not what we were expecting...

Tomorrow is another holy day here, everything possible will be closed. That means no school for us too! I think I'm going to venture up to the small playground and square we discovered was up our street Friday night. We had so much fun playing on the most bizarre jungle gym I have ever seen! Maybe I'll do some homework up there, or just lounge around. We'll see. Buona pasqua a tutti!