Detour in Rome: a leading Australian theologian caught the train for the beatification of Pope John Paul II but never got to her destination. It was all for the best…
By Dr Tracey Rowland
Karol Wojtyla was beatified in Rome on 1 May, which in the Catholic calendar is both Divine Mercy Sunday and the Feast of St Joseph the Worker. It is also the highest of holy days for the Communists, who still exist, albeit in dwindling numbers, in Italy.
As dean of one of the eight John Paul II Institutes worldwide, I was in Rome for the beatification ceremony. I started to make my way to St Peter’s Basilica around 7am for the 10am Mass. I caught a train from the Manzoni Metro to Ottaviani, which is a 10-minute trip. In my carriage, sitting opposite, was a lady carrying a beatification booklet. As our train crossed the Tiber she became quite animated. I looked around to see if there was something in the river that might have been responsible for her reaction, like a papal barge or some such thing, but there was nothing. I smiled at her as if to say, OK, I understand, it is a sacred moment, we are crossing the Tiber. She smiled back and asked in Italian if I was attending the beatification ceremony. I said “Si” and then to indicate that my Italian is a work in progress – “Sono Australian”. She then switched to English and asked if it was my first trip to Rome. I said “No, I work for a John Paul II Institute, so I come over once a year.” At the mention of the words ‘John Paul II Institute,’ she changed seats, sat beside me, and kissed me on both cheeks, European style. She then extended her hand and said “I am Elena, from Milano”. She added that she was a cardiology nurse.
At that moment my thoughts went back to another Roman experience, when I was approached by a chap who said his name was Jorge and that he came from Peru and was a member of a new ecclesial movement whose leader wanted to meet me. I gave him my hotel details, and agreed to be collected for dinner at a certain time. As I waited to be collected it occurred to me that he could be an axe murderer for all I knew. I did not even know his surname. Jorge turned out to be bona fide and I spent a wonderful evening with the founder of the Fraternas movement and several of his high command. Fraternas now has a foundation in Sydney and runs the chaplaincy at the University of New South Wales.
I decided that this was a Jorge type of Roman experience and I became instant friends with Elena. She asked if I would like to join her and her priest friend, Don Battista. I agreed and the three of us set off for St Peter’s. We got about halfway along the road that runs from the Ottaviani Metro to St Peter’s when the police turned us back. There was no more room anywhere along the Via Conciliazione, which stretches from the Basilica all the way to the Tiber. It was jam packed with 1.5 million people. Crowds had been arriving since 2am.
The police suggested that we retreat to the Lateran Basilica, where plasma screens had been set up to cope with the overflow. We walked back to the Metro and found ourselves in a human traffic snarl. Thousands of people were still pouring out of the Metro while thousands of others had been turned back by police and were heading into the Metro.
There were so many people it was not possible to get anywhere near the ticket machines. The only hope was to queue for human service but these queues were about 30 deep. Just as I was concluding that I would spend the ceremony stuck in an underground metro, Elena again became animated. She had noticed a friend at the head of one of the queues. She called out “Luciano, Luciano”, and then instructions for three more tickets. Luciano got the message and emerged from the scrum with a ticket for me, Elena and Don Battista. There was no time to exchange money, so I thanked the complete stranger for buying my ticket and when we finally got onto a train Elena said “Luciano is a psychologist”, and then to Luciano, “Tracey is an Australian theologian”.
It occurred to me that this was something of a foretaste of the end of the world. Leaving aside the fear and trembling, this was a moment when all the sheep were gathered together in the one place, and all feeling close and friendly, because, regardless of whether or not we could speak each other’s language, we were united by a bond that was so deep it did not need to be expressed in any language. The gestures, like Luciano’s ticket for me, or his bow in my direction as he stood back and let me off the train first, were enough.
I tried to explain to Elena that I thought it was like the end of the world, but she did not understand ‘end of world’. I tried words like consummation and eschaton, but they did not help. She suggested French and I countered with German. She agreed to German. I then said: “Es ist wie das Ende der Zeit wenn Christ gekommen will.”
She did not get it but gave me a hug as a compensatory gesture.
We got to the Lateran in time for the start of the ceremony. The crowd broke into applause as Pope Benedict XVI appeared.
He was looking relaxed and happy.
A nun then brought forward the vial of blood which was taken from Blessed John Paul II before his death. As she came forward the choir chanted a motet in Latin.
Don Battista had come with the whole Order of Service and allowed me to read the words of the hymn over his shoulder.
The translation was “Open Wide the Doors to Christ”. As the Pope read out the decree of beatification an icon of John Paul II was unveiled behind the sanctuary.
The next surprise was the second reader. Sr Bernadette Pike, a former student of the Institute, appeared before the microphone. I have known Sr Bernadette since she was Clare Pike, an undergraduate law student. She is a young protégé of Archbishop Barry Hickey and for several years directed his Respect Life office in Perth. I felt deeply proud of her; she managed to get through the whole reading without a quiver and she was a fellow Australian – someone I had taught.
In his homily Pope Benedict XVI spoke of John Paul II’s experiences in Communist Poland and how these led him to conclude that the contemporary culture wars were over what it meant to be human.
John Paul II wanted to juxtapose the Marxist idea of the human person with the Christian. This was evident in the very first lines of his first encyclical – Redemptor Hominis. Whereas the first sentence of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto was: “Workers of the World Unite, the history of the world is the history of class conflict”; the first sentence of Redemptor Hominis was: “Jesus Christ, the Redeemer of Man, is the centre and purpose of human history”. For one, class conflict and economics is the dynamic of history; for the other it is Christ.
Pope Benedict XVI emphasised that the pontificate of John Paul II was all about the promotion of a Christian anthropology.
He noted that this anthropology was found in the documents of the Second Vatican Council and that John Paul II, who attended the council as a bishop, was an authentic interpreter of the meaning of the council.
Towards the end of the Mass those of us who were watching on the Lateran’s plasma screen were escorted into the Lateran Basilica to receive Holy Communion.
We returned to the square in time for the Regina Caeli and final blessing. I then said farewell to my new friends, exchanged addresses and promised them all free bed and breakfast if they ever visited Melbourne.
On my way to my hotel I passed one of the 1 May Communist demonstrations. About 50 young people were carrying ‘ban the bomb’ posters and Soviet flags.
I had not seen a Soviet flag for decades. They were marching directly against a crowd of Poles whose red and white flags merged with the red and yellow of the Communists.
I watched to see if there would be a confrontation but the Poles were too happy to even notice their arch-enemies.
Other standout memories of the day included: the sight of huge signs on the doors of restaurants and bars around St Peter’s bearing the words ‘NO TOILET’; a scene on a train where two obviously homosexual Italians were the subject of a morals lecture by a Polish lady (she spoke in Polish, they countered in Italian); a couple of scenes of bishops and monsignori pleading with police to allow them access to roads around the Vatican which had been blocked off; and best of all, T-shirts with the words ‘Tu es Christ’ under a smiling image of John Paul II.
Of course, the correct Latin is Tu es Christus – but leaving aside the problem of spelling, the fact is that John Paul II was the Pope, not Christ.
It should have been ‘Tu es Petrus’. Lucky there were no Protestants anywhere to be scandalised. When it came to sartorial sensibilities, the prize for the best dressed went to the French who, as always, were looking the most über cool; and the prize for the most ‘out there’ regalia went to a group operating on the Vittorio Emanuele bridge.
They were wearing long red capes with a huge image of Christ the King printed on the red cloth and handing out Miraculous Medals and holy cards. They had covered the bridge with banners. One said: “1 million angels for Benedict XVI”; another: “Free Rome: Ultramontanism”.
I tried to find one who could speak enough English to explain who they were but they were not very good at English and I ended up with several holy cards and Miraculous Medals but no deeper understanding.
My dominant spiritual impression was that these crowds of 1.5-2 million people were a concrete example of what French novelist Georges Bernanos (following St Therese of Lisieux), had written about spiritual childhood. Bernanos thought that the best parts of the human being are those elements of faith and hope which somehow manage to survive childhood and do not get snuffed out by the brutality of the adult world.
J.K. Rowling was onto a similar insight with her concept of ‘dementors’. Dementors operate by sucking the hope out of people. It occurred to me that for a few hours at least, Rome was a dementor-free zone. Catholics could find sheer unadulterated joy in being Catholics. It was as if everyone had rediscovered the joy of children, the traffic jams notwithstanding.
All 1.5-2 million had their parts to play in a theo-drama much larger than any individual. There was a sense that together they could actually achieve what Blessed John Paul II wanted – to turn the trajectory of Western civilisation away from a culture of death to a civilisation of love. I imagined that in heaven they would all tell stories, like old soldiers, of how they did their bit – stories of this battle, that fight, those particular dementors, the angelic assistance, the prayers of the saints, the friendships forged along the way.
I also imagined that at the end of time, Christ will not put the Italian police in charge of traffic management; but, if he does, I will be relying on Elena, Luciano and Don Battista to shepherd me through.
Dr Tracey Rowland is Associate Professor and Dean of the John Paul II Institute for Marriage and Family (Melbourne).