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Pallium pilgrimage: Once in a lifetime

Six-day tour featured three close encounters with the pope, Masses at various churches

Saturday, July 10, 2010
Ana Rodriguez-Soto - Florida Catholic

DANIEL SONE | FC Miami's bishops, Auxiliary Bishops John Noonan and Felipe Estevez and Archbishop Wenski, wave to the Miami pilgrims after the papal audience. They then went inside for a private greeting with the pope.

ROME — When the invitation came in the mail, Tom Sheehan did not hesitate.

“As soon as I opened it, I knew I was going,” said Sheehan, a member of St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Lighthouse Point.

He and his wife, Cathy, were among the 250 people from Miami and Orlando who joined Archbishop Thomas Wenski on the pallium pilgrimage June 25-July 2.

Many had been to Rome before. But they all sensed that this would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

“It was one of those opportunities that will never come around again. It’s a one-in-a-million chance,” said Gail Buzzella of St. Mark Parish in Southwest Ranches.

She realized right away that this pilgrimage would allow participants to go “behind the red velvet rope” and do things that regular visitors to Rome could never do.

DANIEL SONE | FC Miguel Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See and a man with myriad Miami connections, hosted a special reception at his Rome home for the pilgrims from Miami and Orlando.

One of them was to be present in St. Peter’s Basilica as Archbishop Wenski received his pallium — the symbol of his office as Metropolitan of the Province of Miami — from the hands of Pope Benedict XVI.

But as meaningful and significant as that event was, it was not even the highlight of the trip.

There was the private reception June 27 at the home of Miguel Diaz, U.S. ambassador to the Holy See, a Cuban native who grew up in Miami and has ties to both St. Thomas and Barry universities as well as St. John Vianney and St. Vincent de Paul seminaries. He hosts receptions each year for all the U.S. archbishops who are receiving their palliums, and he did so this year as well for the pilgrims from Cincinnati, Ohio, and Milwaukee, Wis.

But the pilgrims from Miami and Orlando got their own private reception with the ambassador. As Julieta Valls Noyes, deputy chief of mission for the U.S. embassy to the Holy See, explained, “…this one is special because Miami is special.”

The pilgrimage also featured back-to-back encounters with the Holy Father: June 28 for vespers at St. Paul Outside the Walls; June 29 for the pallium Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica; June 30 for the papal audience in St. Peter’s Square.

Because the groups — five busloads — arrived early for these events, most of the Florida pilgrims could say they were within 25 feet of Pope Benedict at least once, if not all three times.

DANIEL SONE | FC Braving the hot sun from 7:30 a.m. until the beginning of the papal audience has its perks: Miami pilgrims who did that were seated in and near the front row.

Of course, sitting in 90-degree Rome heat for five hours — three hours waiting, two hours for the actual audience — certainly confirmed Archbishop Wenski’s words at the opening Mass of the trip: “We come to Rome not just as tourists. We also have to remember that we come as pilgrims” and pilgrimages entail a certain amount of discomfort. “Make these events prayers,” he suggested.

Aside from offering their discomfort as prayers, the pilgrims also prayed continuously. Archbishop Wenski celebrated daily Mass, each time in a different church of Rome (and once in the cathedral of the Diocese of Albano, just a short drive from Castelgandolfo, the region where the pope spends his summers away from Rome’s heat).

The first Mass took place June 26, the day most pilgrims arrived, in a regular parish church just a block from the main hotel. Of course, being in Rome, this little parish church of Santa Maria della Grazia is older than the U.S. — 350 years old to be exact.

On Sunday, Archbishop Wenski celebrated Mass at one of Rome’s seven major basilicas, Santa Maria Maggiori (St. Mary Major), built on the site where the “Miracle of the Snows” occurred. In a dream, Pope Liberius was told by the Virgin Mary to go to the Esquiline Hill and build a church where he found snow — the date was Aug. 5, 358 AD.

Santa Maria Maggiori was the last stop on the pilgrims’ tour of Christian Rome, which included visits to four of the seven major basilicas visited by Christian pilgrims since the earliest days of the Church: St. Paul Outside the Walls, St. John Lateran and the Church of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, which St. Helen built to house the relics of the cross where Jesus was crucified.

If that was not impressive enough, the next day, June 28, Archbishop Wenski celebrated Mass in the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter’s Basilica — that’s the altar behind the main altar, also done by Bernini. This altar features an alabaster window depicting the Holy Spirit as a dove, and underneath an elaborate wooden chair known as the Throne of St. Peter.

The pilgrims had the place all to themselves as morning light streamed in from the front windows of the world’s largest basilica. As they prayed, workers behind them were preparing the main altar, the papal altar with the famous Bernini columns, for the pallium Mass the next morning.

“It was pretty surreal there,” said Father Alejandro Rodriguez Artola, associate pastor at Our Lady of Lourdes Parish in Miami, and one of the priests who concelebrated the liturgy.

The last Mass of the trip took place at the minor basilica of St. Peter in Chains, home to Michelangelo’s famous “Moses” — sculpted as a tomb for Pope Julius II — and also home to the relics of the chains used to imprison St. Peter both in Jerusalem and in Rome.

That Mass preceded the tour of ancient Rome which featured inside looks at the Colosseum and the Roman Forum.

Still, the most impressive — really incredible — privilege took place the last night of the trip, as the pilgrims from Miami and Orlando literally had the Sistine Chapel all to themselves, with their very own art historian, Elizabeth Lev, present to make the ceiling and Last Judgment come alive.

The pilgrims also had the option to skip the vespers with the pope June 28 and spend the day at Assisi instead — which Sheehan and his wife did.

“Assisi was my favorite place,” he said. “The solitude, the serenity, is overwhelming. It took me over. I had this overwhelming urge to go to confession.”

And he did.

Photos of the pilgrimage are posted — and can be purchased — at www.dotphoto.com. Sign in as a guest, then put in the username “flcmiami” to go to the pallium pilgrimage albums. Or click on any of the pictures posted here to take you there.

DANIEL SONE | FC Archbishop Thomas Wenski leaves the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica after celebrating a private Mass there June 28 with pilgrims from Miami and Orlando.

DANIEL SONE | FC Pilgrims from Miami and Orlando take part in a private Mass June 28 at the Altar of the Chair in St. Peter's Basilica.

I know he was just named Archbishop of Miami, but I sincerely hope that Archbishop Wenski will one day become Cardinal Wenski. May God make it happen!