His Holiness

I knew she meant business. The alarm was ringing at the same the sun was freeing itself from the clutch of the Roman horizon. She was out of bed, showered and primped, before I had time to clear the creases of the pillow from my face. She had even, to my dismay, bedded down in a damp and dark motel room, turning a blind eye to the ring of dirt around the mattress, solely because of its proximity to the Vatican. Donning a long dress, a shawl, and a glimmering crucifix around her neck, Jeannie looked down at me in bed and asked me if I was coming, knowing full well such an invitation was irresistible. The Pope was in town. He was to address a group of pilgrims in the auditorium behind St. Peter’s Basilica. The Swiss Guard would be checking for tickets, the kind of tickets that required half a year of correspondence with the Church. This fact did not bother Jeannie in the least.

The sacrifice of the damp pillow proved worthwhile when we looked up at the walls of the Vatican City just steps from the motel. Dressed in my Sunday best (gelato-spotted khakis and a thrice-worn shirt), I nearly tripped over myself trying to keep up with Jeannie. As she motored across the square, domes glinting overhead in the morning light, I could see that she was suddenly overcome with fervor. The symmetrical columns of the Basilica, the copper ornaments and bells, the realer-than-life statues on its roofline, the vaulted archways like passages to centuries past; these are the designs of heaven’s architects, and when beholding them amidst the company of visibly giddy nuns, balding robed monks, and five thousand joyous fanatics, it is hard not to be inspired. But there was no time to stop and marvel. Jeannie was on the move, dipping and plunging through the throng, searching (the way only she can) for just the right opportunity to free someone from their two extra tickets.

Sometimes I wonder if as a child she was installed was some kind of computer chip, a visual aid that allows her to scan a crowd, target an individual and immediately calculate the perfect approach. What looks to me like one more bobbing head in the crowd must be a glowing red arrow in Jeannie’s eye. When she located her arrow she absconded in its direction, leaving me behind in a precarious tip-toe between the tiny feet of a hundred elderly nuns. When I finally caught up to her, having moved more than one sister to mutter a sin under her breath, she was accepting (with a radiant smile) two golden tickets from a young priest. She held them in her right hand while holding the shoulder of the suited man in her left. Her eye twinkled for the clergyman in such a way, bold yet demure. I think he was ready to leave the priesthood there and then.

She turned to me, her body tense with energy, and mouthed a silent scream. I’m not sure what excited her more, the thrill of success, or the fact that we were five minutes away from seeing the highest agent of the Catholic faith.

When he appeared, to the uproarious clamor of the crowd, he seemed to glide like an apparition above the marble steps of the stage. His long garments swayed in slow motion around his concealed feet. He was a vision of white; his robe, his sash, his hair, all glowing like they he had been lit from the inside. He appeared like an animated spotlight, raising his arms in triumph and tossing rays of light over the enchanted crowd. He was encircled in a halo-shaped aura, a force field of power and reverence. He was met like a rock star about to perform a famous guitar solo, the crowd swooning at his every subtle move. The pilgrims around us waived their national flags, Poles, Portuguese, Germans, Czechs, Spaniards, Scots, Brazilians, Chileans, Mexicans, Puerto Ricans, all competing for a just a papal nod. When he would acknowledge their presence, they would erupt into song, singing words of praise in their native tongue, swaying arm in arm, then embracing each other with complete abandon. The rapture of the crowd contrasted with the stoicism of the Swiss Guard and the papal entourage was startling. And there we were, somewhere in between, reveling in the experience and the mystery of the glow of His Holiness.