On the night of the 1st of April 2005, barely six months after moving to Rome, I stood with my roommates in St. Peter’s Square, holding vigil with thousands of others for Pope John Paul II. It was the night before he died, and the last full day of his papacy. Today, in strangely parallel yet contrasting circumstances, I stood in St. Peter’s Square on the last full day of Pope Benedict XVI’s papacy. But the mood in the crowd was completely different, and no surprise why: no one had died.
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I’ll never forget that phone call. It came around 11am on Monday morning 11 February (just two weeks ago). It was my maritino on the phone. “It’s never happened before! It’s the first time in history….” he shouted down the phone. “WHAT?!” “The pope has resigned!!” or to use his words, “Si è dimesso il papa!!” After expressing the appropriate amount of shock, I couldn’t stop myself from correcting my dashing spouse, “Well, actually, it has happened…at least once. You know, Celestine V?”
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I’d like to take this opportunity to sing the praises of just a few of my very favorite blogs, although there are many more wonderful ones out there. They are all on my blogroll, but a list of names often do not do justice to the uniqueness of each, so I want to give you a little taste of them here, as they are sure to show up often on my weekly review posts. So, in no particular order. Mozzarella Mamma: Patricia Thomas is a foreign correspondent for Associated Press Television News, and one of the few foreign journalists with accredited access to the Vatican.
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One of my favorite things about April, besides the glorious boughs of cascading wisteria to be seen (and smelt) all over Rome, is that it heralds the start of one of my favorite guilty pleasures, television drama, The Borgias. Following the life of the most notorious pope in history, The Borgias chronicles the intrigues, scandal, and corruption of the 15th-century Vatican court, featuring plenty of greed, violence and impermissible sex.
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Yesterday, in a small town just outside Naples, a slightly-past middle-aged man was parking his car. Take this situation out of Italy and you're left with an uneventful couple of minutes that will be forgotten before the emergency brake is on. But in Italy, nothing is ever simple. And rarely is it boring. Frustrating, yes, gnash-your-teeth-and-tear-your-hair-out maddening, oh, hell yeah. But boring, no.
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Carnevale kicks off today, and in honor of that colorful, vivacious, and heady festival, I couldn't help but share with you this gorgeous work of art. Carnevale will be forever linked with Venice (even though it did not originate there) and this fantastical image of Byzantine balloon-churches taking off from Piazza San Marco somehow reminds me of the unforgettable Carnevale I spent in that amazing city in 2005. The painting is the work of Brigid Marlin, an American artist born in 1936 who has been described as the first in a new generation of surrealist artists.
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