I, for one, am sad about the passing of the pope.
I had the good fortune to actually meet the pontiff before his final goodbye. Well, not actually meet him, but see him, behind a mass of people, live and in the flesh.
It was a Wednesday almost a year ago exactly, and I was wandering in Rome by myself. I was trying to find Michelangelo's back-breaking Sistine Chapel when I stumbled into Vatican City. Actually, stumbled across the iron railings that mark the nation's borders. Through the metal, I saw a large group of people staring straight ahead. I took my lead and looked straight ahead as well. What I saw, if I squinted, was an elaborate stage with a little, white-robed man in a funny hat sitting and reading aloud in some foreign tongue from the book he held tremulously in his hands. What I saw when I looked at the jumbo-tron a little to the left and above the stage was the pope sitting and reading aloud in some foreign tongue from some book he held tremulously in his hands.
First, I was in shock. Was it really the pope sitting up there? He wasn't in a glass box. There weren't hundreds of thousands of people swarming about. He was just up there, leading a service. It all seemed so normal. I had to get closer.
So I went to the main entrance of the nation. There were about seven cops standing there. One gave me a box to put my personal belongings in. One waved a metal-detecting wand from my head to my feet. A third patted me down. Then, after a careful look at my camera, the first gave me all my stuff back. I entered the country.
I walked up and got as close as the back row. There was a short monk in front of me and from over the top of him I had a perfect view of the pope. I snapped away with my camera, something I am always wary of doing. I resent photographs, preferring to experience the moments, but the pope deserves a picture or two. I took two of him with my zoom maxed out, and then one of the jumbo-tron with minimal zoom. Then, I stood and watched him a while.
He was so old and fragile. It really was a beautiful sight. Here he was, this divine presence, this larger-than-life leader, this powerful symbol throughout the world, so vulnerable and exposed. He looked like he might perish at any moment. I actually held my breath for some of the mass, fearful that he would in fact do so, and fearful that I, as presumably the only Jew in the land, would be held responsible for the crime. But he didn't. He just kept plugging right along until he had completed the service. He then exited back to the cathedral with one last genuine smile to the devoted faithful who were cheering, crying and waving banners with the names of the foreign cities that they had come all the way from to see him in person.
Smiling, he seemed to me at that moment to be a curious representation of Catholicism - gracefully aged, always teetering on extinction, but still somehow proud and resistant. He was no longer a forceful intimidator: He had been through a lot, but he was still smiling with a hopeful reassurance.
I found out later that the pope gave Wednesday mass in the Vatican every week whenever he was able to. I found that most admirable. It was like a lotto winner not quitting his day job. Sure, the pope could be selling out huge stadiums, but he still stuck to St. Peter's - performing for the locals, the tourists like me and however many others could make the pilgrimage each week. That's true nobility.
I was profoundly saddened to hear of the pope's passing. I liked what I saw of him.
I still remember that smile.
Gavin Shulman '05 shoots .296 on the one-cup.
