Jon & Zoe Do Iran (et al.)

A Little Bit Holy | May 3, 2009

Spent a couple of days in Rome, saw some things, made some purchases.

We managed to get around the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Palatino and the Capitalino Museum. God bless Rome, everything was free. Somehow we managed to perfectly time our visit with Culture Week (the week following the anniversary of the founding of Rome), where all the admission fees to state owned sites are waived.

Last of all, on the day we are due to get the night train to Paris (which sounds heaps like the title of a short film) we decide we will spend the day in the Vatacan City. By yet another fluke, the Vatacan is also free on the last Sunday of the month. We get up at 5.30 to mission over there to make sure we are at the head of the queue for the 7.30 opening of St Peters Basilica. We arrive about 7.00 and there’s a few people ahead of us.

7.30 rolls around. It doesn’t open. The queue behind us grows.

8.00. Not open. More people. Some have banners.

8.15 Not open.

8.30 Not open. I am becoming increasingly frightened by the number of banners and people. Many are clutching orange tickets.

8.45 Guards start turning on the x-ray machines and metal detectors.

9.00 Open. Mass rush on gates. Zoe and I are told off for running.

It is at this point that Zoe and I work out we don’t know why we are running, or what to. But the crowd remains at our heels, so we go with it. Someone gives us each a book in Italian. But there is no time to read that now. There’s hurrying to be done.

As we erupt into the square in front of the basilica, we see a huge set of chairs. Not wanting to be left out, we grab a few in the front row. We still don’t know what is happening.

9:25 A woman sitting next to me turns and asks me a question in Italian. My puzzled expression encourages her to try again in English: “Which Saint are you here to support?”. This question confuses me. I didn’t realise that we needed to pick a horse to back. I thought they were all good in the Gods book. I explain that we are from New Zealand and don’t actually know what is happening. The woman laughs and turns to an older woman sitting on her other side and says something in Italian, to which the woman also laughs. It is at this point that I turn over the book I have been holding and look at the cover. Cannonizaztion. In a blast of religious knowledge from my childhood, I recall that if someone is cannonised they are made into a saint.

We have absent mindedly wandered into a ceremony where four people will be admitted to the register of Saints. And we have kickass seats.

The ceremony itself is a bit like a football rally. Everyone is messing around and making noise and taking photos, then the Pope comes out. People cheer.

The ceremony kicks off, and as the Pope mentions the name of each saint, a different area of the seating cheers and waves banners and flags. The Italian woman’s question about which saint we were supporting suddenly starts to make a lot of sense. The people here have come a long way just for this. There are Germans and Brazilians alongside the Italians. The whole thing is pretty entertaining to start off with, but by the time we get to about the 90 minute marker it’s all starting to wane. We hang around for another 60 minutes (partly out of fear, the Pope is speaking, and that is a man you don’t walk out on). I spy in the program that there is a ‘moment of personal reflection’ and Zoe and I reflect that it’s time to get out of dodge.

We had a look around the bookshop and then wandered out.

It’s a good thing we had a spare day in Rome at the end, cause I didn’t make it inside the Vatacan or St Peters that day. The best laid plans and all that.

Still glad we stayed though, it’s not every day that you see that kind of thing.