The day started out meeting at Largo Argentina (better known as the end of the tram line) at 9:45 with my friends Jen and Dave to go to Chiesa Gesu for mass at 10am. We were nervous that we wouldn't be able to get a seat but the church wasn't much over half full. I guess when you have a city of hundreds of churches it's hard for them all to fill up... Chiesa Gesu is located on the main road Vittorio Emanuele right near Piazza Venezia, which is basically as downtown as you can get. It's a massive church, built in the 1500's for St. Ignatius, who is now buried in there just to left of where we sat today. If you read my other blog post about church in Perugia, I found out that that place wasn't the norm in Italy, kind of. So here they did exchange the sign of peace (which caught me off guard and unprepared for what to say), but it was easy enough to adopt to in Italian, turns out all they say is "Pace", simple and to the point, mi piace. This was another quick mass, without altar boys, without lots of music and without community announcements to prolong it. The most humorous part came at communion when normally ushers come around, stand next to your pew and let you know when to get up to go receive the Eucharist. However, this is Italy, they hate order and lines here. I kid you not, as soon as the priest stepped down ready to start giving it out, everyone from all corners of the church got up and moved into line in no order whatsoever. They're not going to run out, you don't need to rush... I thought it was so funny, anyways so we realized that this was every man for himself and joined into the unorganized flow of people towards the front. I thought it'd last longer considering it was Easter but we were out of there by 10:45, including me going around afterward and taking some pictures once the priest left and I felt it wasn't rude anymore.
From there, we went across the street, charged up with espresso and panini's (one of the best I've had yet) then got on the jam-packed bus heading towards St. Peter's. After squeezing on inches from the door in the back, I managed to fit on. After 6 short stops we were at the end of Via Della Conciliazione with St Peter's and a hundred thousand people looming up ahead in the distance.  |
| View far awar from end of street |
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| View up closer where we stayed inside the square |
People everywhere. I obviously have never seen so many in that area yet. I went on Ash Wednesday and thought it was pretty crowded, but that was nothing compared to this. Online it said that 100,000+ were there today in celebration. We wandered our way through the initial crowd, then through the gate into the square and finally settled on a spot as close as we could get towards the right hand colonnade. We settled in around 11:15, just a bit after their mass had started. The Pope shortly started his homily in which his main points preached (learned via internet) for diplomacy in Libya, respect for citizens by middle eastern leaders and a more welcoming attitude towards refugees (something Italy's having a big problem with right now). By the way, both the Gesu mass and this were in Italian. Luckily they had big screens to show up close up photo's of him because all I could see from my point of view was a figure in white standing in front of the altar. To me, the crowd was relatively respectfully quiet, or as quiet as a crowd that large can actually be. According to an article I read online, double the amount of people are expected to show up here next Sunday for the beatification ceremony of former Pope John Paul II. I'm definitely going to try and get to that but I have a feeling it's going to be a very hard seat. As of now, I have plans to rent Motorino/Vespa's next Saturday with a couple friends and they'll be due back by 9am on Sunday if we rent them overnight (it's safer to drive the streets of Rome at 1am on a Saturday night because of how crazy it is when the roads are full during the day) so I'm thinking as soon as I return it, I head over to The Vatican. Of course needing a few espressos to help me through it.. Sounds like a good plan, right?
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| Il Papa |
Okay so after we left, through the craziest of circumstances I ran into my cousin Jess who is here with the school she teaches at. We had plans to meet up tomorrow, but then today as we were leaving St Peter's walking back down the road towards the bus stop, I was telling my friends about her and wouldn't you know she walked right by us at that very second and recognized hearing her school and name. So here's us in front of a tourist shop literally right next to St Peter's Square. What are the odds, I still can't believe that in a city with millions and millions of people we ran into each other amidst a massive crowd completely unplanned. What a great Easter surprise! Now, it's just about 4 and all that's left of the day is to head over to my friends apartment where we're doing our own Easter meal. It won't be a normal Easter meal from back home but it should be good. We're all pitching in and bringing/making something so it ought to be a good feast. I'm really looking forward to it.
By the way, if you want to realize what makes America and Italy different, all you have to do is observe how they celebrate Easter. Here, Easter is still just a religious holiday. There's no decorations with bunnies anywhere, no ads with an Easter Bunny, no marshmallow peeps, no egg ornaments, no spring colored displays etc. You get the point. Now whether you think America made it better or ruined it with the whole commercialized/Americanized version we do, that's up to you to decide. I just thought it was an interesting observation. I'm looking forward to asking my Italian friends if they woke up to Easter baskets filled with filler grass, hollow eggs with money and chocolate bunnies as children; or if they woke up and went to mass to celebrate the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
That's it for now, Happy Easter to everyone!
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