Today we piled onto a city bus (packed like sardines)to Get to St.
Peter's Square. One of Beth's requests was to see Pope Benedict XVI
wave his blessing from his papal residence window. We discovered that
he does this at noon on Sundays.
He was so high up that, even with binoculars, he looked like an ant!
We hadn't realized that he spoke as many languages as he did. He
delivered a message in Italian, English, German, French, Spanish, and (
we think) Polish. It was entertaining to see how crowds cheered, waved
flags, and clapped when he began speaking in their language.
We spent some time sitting in Saint Peter's Square. The sunshine felt
good on our faces! The square is oversized and spacious. It is
surrounded with rounded walls made of white columns, and the walls are
topped with 140 statues of saints. It is so expansive that it almost
feels overwhelming.
It began to sprinkle, so we dipped into a restaurant for lunch. The
pasta, pizza, dessert, and cappuccinos hit the spot. We walked by
Cast' Angelo (also called Hadrian's Mausoleum) with the bronze statue
of St. Michael on its top. This was used as a papal residency for
awhile and has a high outdoor passageway that leads all the way to the
church.
We crossed the Tiber River on the Ponte Sant' Angelo Bridge. It's
beautiful bridge with 14 marble statues of angels. Each one carries a
symbol of the passion of Christ: a nail, shroud, crown, etc. In the
Middle Ages, it was the only bridge connecting the Vatican to downtown
Rome. In 1450, the crowd of pilgrims became so large that it caused
the bridge's banisters to break and 200 fell to their deaths. We
thought that only happened at rock concerts...
None of us had seen catacombs, so we chose to visit the first ones in
Rome. The Catacombs of Callisto are 4 miles south of town, so we
hailed a taxi. Our driver dropped us off way at the bottom of the hill
and--still walking two miles later uphill with hoods and umbrellas-- we
were not humored. The good news is that we made the final tour and had
a wonderful guide named Brother Oberto, originally from the Philippines.
We laughed the whole way through because he kept telling us to hurry
through the tour saying they would shut the catacomb lights off on us
at 5:30. He was serious, but we kept giggling just trying to visualize
such a thing! The most humorous part of the tour was Brother Oberto
whispering, "Quickly now... The Germans are coming.". Again, he was
serious (there was another guide behind us with German tourists). We
especially started laughing when he asked the only man in our group,
"You're not German, are you?" Maybe it was so funny because Beth,
Donna, Mary, and Brenda all have some German ancestry.
The catacombs were fascinating. The Romans were into cremation, but
the earliest Christians wanted to be buried believing their bodies
would rise whole at the return of Christ. We not only saw empty burial
holes but also frescos of the walls and gravestones. We saw the
memorial to St. Cecelia who was a young Roman girl who encouraged early
Christians to sing about their faith. The Romans attempted to kill her
three times, the last time by beheading. It was law that one being
beheaded could only be chopped three times. This saint lived another
three days. When her tomb was excavated later, her body was curled onto
its side with three fingers being held out.
We stopped at the Church Domine Quo Vadis where it is said that Peter
was deliberating whether to leave Rome. Christ then appeared to him
and told him to stay. The church was very tiny, but had a moving
fresco of Peter being crucified upside down and another one of him
holding the keys to the kingdom.
Brenda loved the stain glass of an angel holding a sword over what
looked like Satan. Interestingly, there was a block of marble from
the old Roman road (Appia Way) with footprints. According to
tradition, they are said to be the prints of Jesus on the ancient Via
Appia.
Donna said we lost some more weight from all the jiggling our bodies
had to endure on the bouncing public bus on the way back to our B & B!
Hitting all those bumps in the road didn't put us in much of a mood to
eat: ( We ate lightly and headed off to bed.
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