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Ha llegado la noticia: Nuestro Santo Padre fue llamado a la casa del Padre The news was shared: Our Holy Father was called home. Gerade ist es gesagt worden: Unser Heiliger Vater ist heimgekehrt zum Vater |
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El desmantelamiento del gigantesco dosel que ha estado casi en forma permanente sobre el altar exterior de la Basílica de San Pedro Dismantling of the giant canopy that has been almost permanently over the outdoor altar in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica Der große Baldachin über dem Altar auf dem Petersplatz wird abgebaut… |
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Sabado por la mañana: vida en la Plaza San Pedro Saturday morning: life at St. Peter’s Square Samstagmorgen: Leben auf dem Petersplatz |
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El pueblo de Dios se reune... God’s beautiful people comes together... Gottes wunderbares Volk kommt zusammen |
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Miradas ansiosas hacia las ventanas del Papa... Anxious views towards the window of the Holy Father’s apartment Besorgte Blicke zum Fenster der Wohnung des Papstes Fotos: Donnelly © 2005 |
ROME, Simon Donnelly. Today began in happiness and ended in a different kind of happiness: it started late morning on Saint Peter’s square, with thousands of people come to keep watch at the side of the dying pope, and ended with deep sadness at the Holy Father’s passing from our midst, though this sadness was tinged with Christian joy.
The square of St Peter’s (and it’s not even square!, said my friend, Ulrich, the German seminarian from Cologne on his free semester in Rome), this square can change so much in one day. The morning began with sleepy pilgrims heading home: they had been keeping watch at the dying Holy Father’s side during the night. Fresh pilgrims began arriving, of every possible description: Africans, Germans, Americans, Scots, Poles, Indians... so young they were in prams, so old they had to hold onto each other for support. Young sisters and old sisters, priests too young to have ever known another pope, and priests old enough to have known Pius XII.
We were kneeling next to our dying father.
The piazza had an almost festive air: it was a beautiful spring day in Rome, almost like the day had been planned for the celebration of life! Life of all kinds: families with children, seminarians, groups of nuns, tourists-turned-pilgrims, believers, non-believers... I saw families their with disabled elderly relatives, and mentally disabled children. God’s beautiful people were uniting around the bedside of their father in extremis. Last night, the Bishop who led the rosary spoke movingly: ‘When the father is sick, the children come to his bedside. When the father is dying, they kneel down next to him’. We were kneeling next to our dying father.
The only Vatican activity we could really notice was the dismantling of the giant canopy that has been almost permanently over the outdoor altar in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica. It was a sombre sight: they were preparing us for a funeral liturgy, I thought.
The rather bright colour of my Pontifical Scots College soutane attracted questions, and journalists, believers and non-believers... All colleges used to wear them: the German seminarians from the Pontifical Germanicum college used to wear red, and were known as i gamberi rossi (die rote Krebse): the red crabs! Ours is purple for the heather flowers of Scotland, with a red sash for the blood of the Scottish martyrs.
I met old friends, and made new friends on the square today: a Schoenstatt seminarian from Argentina, a French journalist from La Vie, an inspiring CNN radio journalist (Catholic), an Italian seminarian classmate, a young Polish sister in my class, a Mexican couple (‘the Pope has been to see us eight times!’), a non-Catholic French woman who had met the Holy Father once (describing him as ‘pure light, just pure light’)... and finally a Scots military chaplain priest, who has made spiritual retreats on Berg Moriah at Schoenstatt! What a very small world it is!
"Mercy means the love an goodness of God, which we need"
On the way in, I had been expecting to deal with the horrors of the Roman bus system (lovely when it works, anarchic and despotic and truly nightmarish when it doesn’t). But an Italian stranger with her children stopped her car to offer me a lift into town. "It looked like you were in a rush", she said. I was... On the way, one of her quiet, well-behaved sons—not the stereotype at all!—asked: "Mom, what is ‘divine mercy’? Why is it tomorrow?" He had seen a poster along the road. I fumbled for an answer. So his mom said: "Mercy means the love and goodness of God, which we need. The Pope thinks it is so important that he has given this to us as a feast so we can all share in it". Her theology was so perfectly spot on that there was nothing more I could say. A precious glimpse into family life: Catholic motherhood in action!
We abandoned the square for a few hours, and came back after supper to a piazza completely and utterly filled mostly with silent, prayerful Italians, but also with out-of-town visitors: just like last night, we prayed the rosary together, with some of John Paul’s own reflections, but this time the joyful mysteries. We finished again with a long, long litany of the titles of Our Lady: Mother of God, Mother of Martyrs, Mother of Confessors, Morning Star... and the title close to the heart of the pilgrims to the new Schoenstatt shrine: ‘Mother of the Church (Matris Ecclesiae), pray for us.’ We entrusted our pope again and again to the Mother, the mother he selected for his Totus Tuus. We sang the Salve Regina and the Regina Coeli. So, we had prayed the rosary that he asked us to pray—for peace, especially after the September 11 attacks. And now it was the eve, less than three hours from the feast of Sr Faustina Kowalska’s Divine Mercy.
The Holy Father has returned to the House of the Father
We began to disperse into the darkness, but suddenly a bishop’s voice began another Our Father and another Hail Mary... two more Hail Marys and a Glory Be. This was very strange. Hadn’t we already finished praying for tonight?
And then he told us: ‘At 9.37pm tonight, our Holy Father, John Paul, 84, returned to the house of the father’. This was the moment of truth. It hadn’t seemed real before, but now it was real. There was silence, and many many tears. Men and women—we all cried because the earthly shepherd of Christ’s flock has left us. Father Kentenich said: ‘Our whole life is a going-home to the father’ (Unser ganzes Leben is ein Heimgang zum Vater). And so, our universal shepherd, the Polish philosopher-actor-priest from Wadowice, Bishop of Cracow, and for nearly 27 years Bishop of Rome, had left us on his last journey: the journey home that he has to make by himself, as each of us must one day.
The Bishops prayed the ‘De profundis’ in Latin, and then Italian: the psalm full of grief, crying out to God: "From the depths, I cry to you, oh God...". Then we sang the Salve Regina again, with these very meaningful words for us tonight: "Hail, holy Queen, mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness, our hope. To you do we cry, exiled children of Eve. To you do we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn then, you who are our advocate, your merciful eyes towards us. And after this exile of ours [on earth], show us Jesus, the blessed fruit of your womb. Oh merciful, oh faithful, oh sweet Virgin Mary".
Tears flowed freely. Everyone has personal memories of the Holy Father. Our Scots rector with us last night had stood on the same square in 1978 when Karol Wojtyla was made pope. He had touched every one of us in so many ways. A Polish priest at our college, born just a year before Karol Wojtyla was made pope feels especially close to him, as all Polish people do.
The retired Bishop of his diocese, Bishop Ignaz Jez, who knew Fr Kentenich in Dachau, said recently at our college, where he came to say Mass: "I knew the Holy Father for twenty years at the Polish Bishops conference. I used to call him ‘Karol’, though I don’t any more...!". He was speaking to us at our college two months ago. Bishop Jez had been to see the Holy Father that week in January, and told the Pope a joke, which he laughed at (about a boy pulling his sisters’s hair). The Pope laughed, he said. And now, at 91 years of age, Bishop Jez has outlived even the Pope.
Rest in peace, Holy Father
We felt that this pope loved each of so much, even though he could only point us to the Heavenly Father, who perfectly loves every creature He has created. The Holy Father saw his job as a servant: directing us the Lord of life. Over and over he told us not to be afraid, from the very first moments of his papacy. We should not even be afraid of death.
Then last night the bells tolled from afar—the saddest notes in all the world—for the moment when a pope dies. As we began leaving the square, thousands of others were still arriving. We walked away into the night: the sheep without a shepherd.
Tomorrow we will come back for Holy Mass with Angelo Cardinal Sodano—no longer seretary of state—as others prepare our deceased pope for the visitations of the faithful over three days next week.
So many implications, little and big: the Eucharistic prayer at Mass must be changed now: we can no longer pray for ‘John Paul, our pope’—or in Rome, as it has been for more than 26 years: ‘John Paul, our pope and bishop’. Vatican City state has no leader. All the senior positions in the Vatican government are automatically suspended, to be renewed or changed later. Every TV and radio channel—local and foreign—is choked with the news. And people who are not even Christian are saying beautiful things about our Holy Father, John Paul. The impact on the world was much greater than many of us even realised.
Rest in peace, Holy Father. Your long, long journey is over. You have sewn for us the seeds of the future of the world. Intercede for us now, in our valley of tears.