Feature News

'A present from God himself'

Miami, Orlando pilgrims experience private prayer in the Sistine Chapel

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

ANA RODRIGUEZ- SOTO| FC Archbishop Wenski leads pilgrims from Miami and Orlando in a vespers service inside the Sistine Chapel. At left is Msgr. Terence Hogan, at right is Msgr. Michael Souckar.

ANA RODRIGUEZ- SOTO| FC Elizabeth Kobrzynski and Claretian Missionary Sisters Carmen Alvarez and Yolanda Kafka wait for the vespers service to begin inside the Sistine Chapel.

VATICAN CITY — It was an incredible journey that ended incredibly: with 250 of Archbishop Thomas Wenski’s “closest friends” sitting in the Sistine Chapel, first to pray, then to listen as one of the world’s experts revealed its glories from the perspective of art and history.

“It was Michelangelo who taught me to love God in this room,” said art historian Elizabeth Lev, professor of art history at Duquesne University’s Italian campus.

Her passionate talk after evening prayer July 1, the last day of the pilgrimage, made Michelangelo’s masterwork come alive in a totally moving way.

And it moved her as well, she said, as she had visited the Sistine Chapel thousands of times over the years but had never had the opportunity to pray inside it.

“This just doesn’t happen,” she said. “Honestly, I’m quite moved.”

Our Roman tour guide had told us as much earlier in the day: “I have never heard of people going to the Sistine Chapel to pray. It’s the private chapel of the Holy Father. It’s really, really a gift,” she said, “something very special.”

Indeed, there was Archbishop Wenski wearing a stole that had once belonged to Pope John Paul II. There we were singing “Amazing Grace” and “Salve Regina” underneath the masterful frescoes of Michelangelo.

Normally, people “squish” through the Sistine Chapel, a wall-to-wall mass of bodies shuffling forward while trying to look up, as guards “shush” them to be quiet and warn them “no photos.”

We had the Sistine Chapel all to ourselves. We had plenty of room to sit on the floor, take pictures and stare up — or even lie down to get a better view — as Lev described each panel and how Michelangelo, “thinking like a sculptor,” had “rendered the invisible … visible” in his frescoes of the creation of the world and the Last Judgment.

“If you’re fortunate enough in a lifetime to experience it, it’s a present from God himself,” said Barbara Scerbo, a parishioner from St. Pius X Parish in Fort Lauderdale. “There are no words to really describe the feeling. I was reduced to tears in the Sistine Chapel. I thought, ‘Why me, Lord? Why have I been blessed to be here?’

“I guess he knows the answer,” she added. “All I can say is thank you.”

Ellie Lawrence of Nativity Parish in Longwood put it this way as she sat down on the bus that would take us back to the hotel for the final time of this pilgrimage: “I feel like I’ve died and gone to heaven.”

This article is adapted from Ana Rodriguez-Soto’s daily blog of Archbishop Thomas Wenski’s pallium pilgrimage. The blog, and a slide show of pictures from each day, is available at www.miamiarch.org/blog.

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.

ANA RODRIGUEZ- SOTO| FC At a reception following the vespers service in the Sistine Chapel, Msgr. Terence Hogan announces that Miguel Fernandez of Miami's St. Thomas the Apostle Parish, is donating $100,000 to restore a column in the Vatican Gardens in remembrance of Archbishop Wenski's parents. With him are Archbishop Wenski and Father Mark Haydu, international director of the Patrons of the Arts in the Vatican Museums.