Easter Sunday at St. Peter's

BECAUSE I'VE SPENT most of my life as a Lutheran, my knowledge of Catholicism is somewhat limited.  If you asked me to recite the "Hail Mary" prayer,  I might start telling you about Doug Flutie's miracle pass in 1984.  If you asked me to give a "Confession," I might start singing the song "Confessions Part II" by R. Kelly.

But that doesn't mean that I wasn't willing to go Easter Mass at St. Peter's with the new pope while I was studying abroad.  It was a once in a lifetime opportunity.  I was eager and willing to learn about a sect of religion different than my own, and give it all of the respect that it deserves.  

The day of the papal resignation was when the idea of attending Easter Mass first came up.  It was February 11th and one of my friends, Erin, said she'd had an extra ticket to go to the Easter Sunday service.  I jumped at the opportunity and said that I would go.

The acquisition of tickets for Easter Mass at the Vatican is no easy task.  On their website, under the heading "Papal Event Tickets," it reads: "Note: Christmas and Easter Papal Mass Tickets are difficult to obtain." But fortunately, Erin had already taken care of everything on the ticket front (as she'd faxed a letter to the Vatican well in advance) so she went to pick them up and we were ready to go.  Sunday morning began early, around 7:30 so we could leave for the service around 8:15.

Perhaps my expectations were too large going into this.  I figured that we would be able to get a seat somewhere inside the church, and that there would be translator ear pieces that you could set your respective desired language to.  I found out how wrong I was the moment I stepped off the public transportation bus.

We walked up to St. Peter's square and saw a line of about 1,000 people waiting to get through a metal detector.  Erin and I weaseled our way to the front so it wound up not taking as long as expected.  We walked around the square for awhile, seeing if we could get in the church (couldn't as the service was entirely outside) or if we could even find a seat (couldn't, all taken).  At one point, I went up to one of the Swiss Guards and showed him my ticket to see if it would get me any closer.  He took one look at me, smiled, and said no.  I felt like I was getting rejected by a bouncer at a nightclub, particularly because he got to say no to me in front of a large crowd of people who were already gathered in the square (all of whom casually snickered as I was getting rejected, by the way).  Erin and I walked around for another fifteen minutes, and eventually settled on a place in the middle of the square.

There were no seats, so we sat on the cobblestones for about a half an hour until the service started at 10:15.  It was very cool seeing Pope Francis I in person.  However, once again falling short of my expectations, was the fact that we didn't have any way for the service to be translated.  So once it begun, we were there listening to a different language (e.g. Spanish, Latin, and Italian) for about 95 percent of the service (there was one reading in English while I was there).  We didn't even have service pamphlets telling us what was going on.  I felt somewhat clueless.  Even though it was a really nice day outside, Erin and I decided that we didn't want to be there for the whole time and left early.  It was a cool experience, nonetheless, and I was thankful that Erin was able to acquire the tickets for us.

Next update might be next weekend, as I believe I'm going on a weekend trip.

JC