The Pope Sends His Love

It was a beautiful morning. Sun shining, blue sky, warm with a cool breeze. I went to St. Joes to await the arrival of the bus which would bring 55 of us to the St. Joseph Seminary at Dunwoodie, NY to see the Pope interact with the youth of the area parishes. Everything was great but we had one hitch. One young girl forgot her identification so we had to leave her behind. Security would be tight and she would not have been admitted without it. We gave her ample time to go home to get it but she never came back.

What a shame. This is a once in a lifetime chance for most people. We got on our way and arrived at Yonkers Race Track about 1 hour and 15 minutes later. That was where they were parking the busses. We were shuttled to the seminary after chanting and taunting other dioceses who had less of a turnout and after being interviewed by various reporters and tv commentators. When we finally arrived it was about 11:15. The day's activities were to begin at noon. It was mostly loud Christian rap and various types of popular Christian music. After about an hour and a half my head exploded! Then it came time to get lunch which was provided. Our whole group went up to the vendor's area and found the lines to be really long but that was the only option. We actually waited on line for 2 hours and 40 minutes in the hot son only to find out that the first step in getting food was to be handed a cardboard tray. Once we got the tray we went onto the food line and waited another 40 minutes to get a hamburger which was certainly used the previous night as a hockey puck in the playoff games. Unfortunately, this was the only place they had water so many of our group was getting a little dizzy and dehydrated because the sun was pretty warm and the water was hard to come by. We were not permitted to bring anything in. This helped time pass though and around 5:30PM (after spending time in a hospital tent with one of the girls in my charge) the Pope finally arrived. This is when everything turned around. The Pope spoke directly to the teens with warmth and was genuinely connected with them. The teenage girls said, "he is so cute. I just want to hug him". The guys said, "he is a really cool guy". Never thought of the Pope as cute and cool but there you have it from the mouth of babes.. More later