Papal Audience with Pope Francis

The title of this post sounds more amazing than it really was. Remember that we managed to acquire a ticket for the weekly audience with the pope? Well, this is the event that I have been waiting for. My companions were non-Catholics and weren’t really interested to duke it out with several thousand other people decided to give me the ticket. I was only too happy to be there. I remember back then, Pope John Paul II visited the Philippines and held the World Youth Day there. I desperately wanted to go but I didn’t get a chance to be there at that record breaking outdoor mass which was attended by 4-5 million people. That was practically half the population of the city squeezing into that park. It was an amazing show of love for the pope and I only got to watch it on television.

I was treating the Papal Audience with Pope Francis as some sort of World Youth Day, and it really does have the electric feel to it. I was there early to hopefully find a good place to sit. I didn’t have anybody with me so if I ever needed to go to the bathroom I would most probably lose my seat. There were thousands of people from all over the world who were there for the papal audience and some were even carrying flags. It really was a World Youth Day kind of thing with a very fun atmosphere. I didn’t get a seat near the front but I thought I was already close enough to the front.

People started to get excited when images of the Pope Francis on a popemobile flashed on the outdoor screens. People were frantically searching for where he might be. There were fences which divided the crowd, but they also served as roads so the popemobile could pass. As you might expect, Pope Francis is a huge hit with the people, his approach to the stage was taking forever as he was stopping every now and then to hug and kiss people. Unfortunately, for me, he never approached our area at all. I could hardly see him from where I was. All I saw as someone in white moving very fast.

A papal audience starts with greetings of the pope which are read in several languages, mostly European languages. This was also followed by his greetings to the various groups who were there. I don’t know how you get him to say your group name but he did. There was a reading of the Gospel followed by a short homily. I took a photo of the pope from where I was but he was only a few white pixels high. Still it was a glimpse of how a World Youth Day would have been. I would probably be kicked out of the World Youth Day now but at least I got to experience a part of it.

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