At 5:00 am my
alarm went off, causing my travel roommate and myself to groan groggily in
dissatisfaction. We were especially upset since we had only gone to bed
recently, due to a late dinner with our travel professor. However, there was no
desire from either of us to hit the snooze button on my alarm clock and sleep
through the day’s events. Today we would witness history in the making.
We gave ourselves an hour to get
dressed and to fully wake up, and then we left the hotel promptly at 6:00 to walk
to the metro station on the outskirts of Rome. The walk was uneventful; at
least we all remember it that way since we were experiencing the
end-of-academic-travel exhaustion mixed with our lack of sleep. We jumped onto the
packed metro and rode it for six stops which took us to the border of the
Vatican City. Excitement began to settle in when we followed the thick crowd of
people from the metro station only to be blocked by the Vatican City’s gates.
But that was when the magic activated.
When we arrived at the gates they
magically opened, allowing the thousands of waiting people to access Saint
Peter’s square, the most desired place in Italy –maybe the world- to be that
day. As the gates rose, everyone in my group tightly grasped hands so as to not
get separated, and we began to sprint through the streets of the Vatican City.
We began hollering with excitement for what we were about to witness, my friend
Bea waving her Brazilian flag through the air to represent her pride for her
homeland. Thousands of people began to yell viva
il papa. I was looking up at the sky, trying to remember every detail of
the brick walls and the beautiful sky, it was the first day on travel that we
had seen the sun. We ran until we approached the security line, but we hardly
slowed down. I took off my purse and tossed it carelessly into the x-ray
machine, ran through the metal detector and grabbed my purse as quickly as
possible so I wouldn’t get left behind. I found Bea’s hand and grasped it once
more as we pushed our way through the crowd to get to the front of Saint Peter’s
square. We pushed our way to the very front.
We waited for hours in the most
cramped conditions I had ever been in. I had so little room to stand that I was
leaning sideways, holding onto the arm of my close friend Matthew just so I
wouldn’t fall on top of another person. 9:30 am on the dot we saw what we were
all hoping for: a glimpse of the Pope. Pope Francis I drove through the crowd
awaiting him before his inauguration, something not commonly done, and
something we were not expecting. He drove directly in front of us, waving as he
went two meters in front of us. The Pope would continuously stop his car to
bless young babies, but there was one moment in particular that brought the
millions of people watching to tears. The Pope saw a sick man at the front of
the crowd and climbed down from his car to kiss and bless him. The atmosphere
changed instantly from joyous to such pure happiness that not one person could
hold back a tear. I didn’t even realize that I was crying until Bea turned
around and hugged me, her eyes full of tears.
“This is the most beautiful thing I
have ever witnessed” she whispered into my ear while we were hugging. And she
was right; I had never seen anything as powerful as that moment, and I’m not
sure that I will ever again.
No comments:
Post a Comment