Papa Francesco

On wednesday I had the priviledge of attending a Papal Audience with at least 50,000 other people who had travelled from all over the world to see Papa Francesco. Even though the Pope didn’t speak until 1030, we got up at 630 to head to the Vatican so that we could get good seats and I’m glad we did because we had to fight tooth and nail to make our way to the front. I was pretty surprised that the toughest people in the crowd were either really old Italian women or nuns! They had no problem pushing us around and throwing ‘bows to beat us to the front. Even though I’m not Catholic it was still a really cool experience. Papa Francesco rode around the crowd on his Pope mobile, shaking hands, kissing babies, and just generally being a really delightful soul. After that some prayers were read and he gave a homily of sorts and then extended a blessing to the crowd. It was interesting because after everything the Pope said or read they had various Cardinals giving a summary of what he said in german, english, spanish, and arabic (which made the whole thing veeeery long but it was cool to see how they reached out to the multiracial crowd.) Overall the experience was very cool and if you ask me, Papa Francesco is a pretty amazing guy.

that is all.