Note from the bloggers: Kristee Sherry, a former Missourian reporter, has been in Washington, D.C., this week to see the pope on his American tour. She is contributing her thoughts and experiences as a guest blogger on Faith in Focus here:
My fingertips were mere inches from touching Pope Benedict XVI’s as he reached out to greet the small crowd assembled in front of the Holy See’s Embassy building on Friday morning to send him off from Washington, DC.
For this Catholic, the experience was – in the same word that President Bush used following the pope’s speech on Wednesday – “awesome.”
Several weeks ago I booked a flight home to visit my family in Northern Virginia. A few days later I received an email from a DC friend, an active parishioner in the Washington Diocese who had been tasked with helping coordinate the pope’s Friday-morning sendoff. She didn’t know I would be home for the event, but had included me on the e-mail list anyways: Did I want to join this group? My answer was an infallible ‘yes.’
We were told to arrive before 6 a.m. in front of the Annunciation parish in Northwest, Washington, DC, and from there we would ride in buses to the Apostolic Nunciature (another name for the papal Embassy), just a few blocks away.
About 150 participants gathered before sunrise to board three charter buses, which proved to be our ticket through the heavily barricaded streets leading up to the Nunciature. At one point we were asked to get off the bus while police dogs sniffed the seats and luggage spaces, and our bags were searched by security. Then we re-boarded, parked outside the building on Massachusetts Ave., and prayed the Rosary together as we waited some more.
Next we lined up near the bushes outside the Embassy, and waited for the Holy Father to emerge from the front doors. Black, armored vehicles lined the driveway before us (no Popemobile this morning).
We waved little Vatican flags – yellow and white, like the one hanging above the Embassy’s entryway – and chanted loudly for “el Papa.” (I hoped Benedict was already awake by this point…)
Monsignor Robert Panke, a young and well-liked priest in the Diocese, led the group in singing Catholic hymns (many of which, I confess, I couldn’t recall without a hymnal). After an especially mumbled song he jokingly urged us not to be “those Catholics who don’t sing” – on today of all days. Then we waved our flags and chanted some more.
After about twenty minutes’ worth of false alarms (secret service agents peeking through the curtained doorway; a few nuns going in and out; a layman carrying someone’s luggage), the secret service activity began to intensify, and we knew the moment was near.
Both of the front doors swung open ceremoniously, cameras began to flash, and a swarm of bishops streamed out, followed, at some point, by Benedict himself. In the sunlight he was an almost blinding white.
He smiled gently and seemed to float toward us, first reaching out to the children standing in the front of the crowd, and then to whomever could reach him.
And for the next minute there was sheer frenzy: our small group seemed to multiply as frantic pictures were taken, “I love you!”s were shouted, and hands were desperately thrust forward in an effort to make contact with the Holy Father – in this once-in-a-lifetime minute.
Truth be told, if I had reached out a little further, or been a just a bit more aggressive (for lack of a better word), I might have been able to touch the pope. But I was momentarily awestruck by his presence, his gentleness, and to witness the fact that he, the human symbol of my faith, is real.
Did anyone else go see the pope? Was your experience like Kristee’s? Tell us about it!
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