Last weekend, Blandine and
I popped over to Turin to check out the Shroud of Turin, currently on display
in that city. Guess what, the pope had the same idea! Blandine was overjoyed. A
chance to see the pope at last! She's a big fan.
We landed up on Sunday, a day in advance, in order to take a dekko at his Holiness (our reserved slot to see the shroud was on Monday – more about that in another post).
Turin seemed abuzz with excitement at the impending arrival of the pope. The faithful were gathered at all the holy spots, setting things up for the visit. The police were setting up barricades and whatnot. There were posters like this plastered all over the place…
The morning of the visit,
we stationed ourselves at a spot near our hotel, where the Pope was expected to
pass. Here he is, passing the crossing of Corso Regina Margherita at Porto
Palazzo, after an event at the basilica Maria Austiliatrice.
Then, like a sizeable chunk
of Turin, we decided to tag along behind the Pope on his various assignations.
Here he is, at the Duomo di San Giovanni, the resting place of the shroud,
where he prayed before the shroud. The public weren’t allowed in, of course,
but it was televised outside on big screens, and he stepped out to bless the gathered.
Next, he went over to
Piazza Castello. Nothing much visible there. Then, he did a driveabout up and
down the magnificent Via Roma, which is something like Turin’s Champs Elysees, to
greet his fans. This is where we got a really close look at him. Here he is,
driving down Via Roma:
That is Blandine you can
hear going ‘Papa! Papa!’ in the video. She got all emotional. She broke into
tears. I lent her a bemused shoulder to cry on. I hadn’t been affected. I had
been too busy taking the video. Then, just to prove you can’t have too much of
a good thing, the pope drove back up the Via. I think he realized he hadn’t
waved to the people on his left. Blandine went into her routine all over again.
I got ready my shoulder for another spot of dampness. Here he is, going up Via
Roma:
After that, the really big
event of the day: the mass by the pope for the people of Turin, at the Piazza
Vittorio. We headed there. We could get no closer than Via Po, the road feeding
into the Piazza. It was packed tight. The really smart cookies had gone there first
thing in the morning and grabbed places, instead of tagging all over Turin.
No
matter, the mass was shown live on big screens…
The mass was in Italian, of course, as was the pope’s sermon. We seemed the only ones in the crowd who did not seem to get it. The others laughed at all the right places, when the pope cracked jokes, and he cracked not a few. But from the number of times Amore was mentioned, I figured it was on the subject of brotherly love, this also being the theme of this year’s shroud exhibition: L'amore più grande (the greater love). I could not help recalling P.G. Wodehouse’s celebrated short story The Great Sermon Handicap, where the sermon on Brotherly Love plays such a big part. Anyhow, it was an interesting experience being packed in a crowd of thousands reciting the Lord’s Prayer in delightful Italian.
The mass over, the pope
drove up Via Po, where we were, to his next rendezvous. Here he is, one last
time. Yup, Blandine again.
After the mass, the crowd rapidly thinned, and we could stroll into the piazza where it had all happened.
Here is the Piazza Vittoria, after the mass. A really clever journo would headline this: the mess after the mass:
Here is the stage where the
pope had been, with the crucifix and the statue of the Virgin Mary at the back,
and diverse official looking gents whom we had seen on the big screen hovering
about the stage during the mass.
We landed up on Sunday, a day in advance, in order to take a dekko at his Holiness (our reserved slot to see the shroud was on Monday – more about that in another post).
Turin seemed abuzz with excitement at the impending arrival of the pope. The faithful were gathered at all the holy spots, setting things up for the visit. The police were setting up barricades and whatnot. There were posters like this plastered all over the place…
The mass was in Italian, of course, as was the pope’s sermon. We seemed the only ones in the crowd who did not seem to get it. The others laughed at all the right places, when the pope cracked jokes, and he cracked not a few. But from the number of times Amore was mentioned, I figured it was on the subject of brotherly love, this also being the theme of this year’s shroud exhibition: L'amore più grande (the greater love). I could not help recalling P.G. Wodehouse’s celebrated short story The Great Sermon Handicap, where the sermon on Brotherly Love plays such a big part. Anyhow, it was an interesting experience being packed in a crowd of thousands reciting the Lord’s Prayer in delightful Italian.
After the mass, the crowd rapidly thinned, and we could stroll into the piazza where it had all happened.
Here is the Piazza Vittoria, after the mass. A really clever journo would headline this: the mess after the mass:
Later, after an excellent antipasti lunch, we decided to take a closer look at the city of Turin, which was fast coming back to normal, the barricades being taken down. More in the next post.
