7 settembre
Today we had our audience with the Holy Father. It was quite
an affair, first of all we gathered at the statue at the bottom of the
Avventine Hill for a photo, and then we boarded 4 buses to take us across town
to the Vatican. After a pretty long wait in the piazza and then going through
security (like in the airport at TSA, I was lucky that I did not have a
pectoral cross or a ring) we were ushered in through the bronze doors. I did
not understand the significance of this until we were there. Those are the
great doors that lead into the Apostolic Palace, guarded by the Swiss Guard.
What a majestic building, I must say. There was beautiful statuary everywhere
(the one I noted closely was a bronze by Salvador Dalì of St George slaying the
dragon). Then up huge flights of stairs to the Clementine Hall (Sala Clementina), which of course is the
famous place for smaller receptions; also where the deceased pope’s body is
laid in state until it is ushered in to the basilica. We had to wait another
half and hour or so, while several young men in grey tuxedos, ushers of some
sort I assumed, looked around and went in and out of doors. Then the
photographers came in and we knew we were close.
Suddenly the lights came on and Pope Francis came in from
the right. What a beautiful face, and a smile and eyes that could light up a
whole room. He seemed very relaxed and spry. He greeted Abbot Notker warmly and
they spoke for some time. Notker gave a little speech and then the Holy Father
spoke as well from a prepared text. It was hard to make out all the Italian,
but there was nothing really new or startling that either one said, though I
was happy to hear both of them mention interreligious dialogue and how it was
entrusted to the monks. The pope was flanked by the ubiquitous Archbishop Georg
Ganswein, his secretary and Benedict XVI’s too, and another archbishop the
entire time. The presidents of the various congregations were all in the front row,
along with several Benedictine women. And we assumed that they were going to be
the only ones to greet him personally, but to my surprise the ushers kept going
back row-by-row and just kept going. Each and every one of us got to greet him.
I thought that was extraordinary. We were at least 250 and it took almost 45
minutes. I just said, “Saluti della
California. Ti volgiamo bene––Greetings from California. We love you.” And
he said to me, simply, in English, “Pray for me.” When I met John Paul II and shook
his hand the thing I noted was his watch (why did he need to wear a watch?) and
his loafers. The thing that I noted about Francis was how small and soft his
hands seemed to be, and his beautiful eyes.
Toward the end there was a tense moment with some younger man in
what seemed to be a home made black habit with all kinds of accoutrements,
including a large black zucchetto. When he got to the pope he immediately put
his left hand on the pope’s shoulder and bent down very close to him and
started talking, as if he was praying over him. Everybody got nervous and
several guys around me asked, “Is he part of our meeting?” No one had ever seen
him before. After a half a minute or so, the archbishops were giving him waving
signs to move on, and then the ushers started closing in and one of them
grabbed his elbow, but still he persisted. Finally someone got him to move on
but instead of leaving he went up to Msgr. Gaswein and started talking to him for
a good while as well. Georg was smiling at the end but with a bit of an
exasperated look on his face. I suppose we will find out who he was tomorrow.
Then back down the long staircases and into the Court of
Damasus. Abbot Jeremy made me stand for a picture there and then had me take
one of him as well, telling me not many people get to be there. (I think that
may be where the Holy Father does donuts with his little Ford Escort.) From
there we were looking right up at the papal apartments, which are right next to
the Sala Clementina, but of course
are unused now, Francis instead getting driven back to the Casa Santa Marta for
his pranzo. I’m told the morning is
for official audiences such as ours, but in the afternoon he still keeps his
own calendar and has private meetings over there.
Such majesty I have never seen before, impressive as history
and architecture, surely, but nothing was as impressive as his smile, his
warmth and charisma. He seemed perfectly at home in himself and for all the
world from now on that is exactly what a pope looks like to me.
I must admit I keep hearing this paragraph from Bruno’s Future of Wisdom in my head, which Jeff
Pickerill and I lip-synched along with when it was quoted at the Wisdom
symposium in early July: at least sometimes the Church seems...
... too exalted in an artificial (and obviously
human) rather than a spiritual way. The church often seems a kind of
intermediate world of institutional pseudo-reality, sometimes even a solemn
out-of-date world of clerical artificiality, tediously mediating between two
realities which are already one: God
and humanity. It is this church which is
not real but a comic fantasy; the reality is the body of Christ.
 |
| The papal apartments from the Court of Damasus. |
They were serving lunch up at Sant’Anselmo but I didn’t want
to walk back up there and it was too late for pranzo here at San Gregorio and it’s a Roman gorgeous day, sunny
but not too hot, so I slipped into some shorts and a T-shirt and took my
longest excursion yet, the Metro up to the Spanish steps where I treated myself
to a big slice of pizza, a caffe lungo
and a cannolo, and then walked all
the way back to San Gregorio, only getting (as Daniel Boone would say)
“bewildered” once.
Please pray for the brothers back in Big Sur. My biggest
concern may come true: there is still a chance that the monks will be evacuated
within the next ten days, unless CalFire can hold the fire line.
