Visitors share the sorrow in streets of Eternal City
Rome was in unsettled mood yesterday, caught between its duties as the focus of sorrow for a grieving global congregation and its unrivalled role as a place of joy for carefree tourists.
The flags were lowered to half mast on the countless national monuments and stately buildings.
Yet the tourists who passed below them and posed for photographs as normal, happily lapping up their surroundings.
Yesterday was only the first of what will be nine days of mourning but already pilgrims to St Peter’s Square had reflected on the loss of “Il Grande” (The Great One).
Anne Fleck-Byrne from Kilkenny city felt she and her husband, Chris, were living examples of John Paul’s influence.
“I’m not even Catholic,” said Chris, originally from the North. “And I had tickets to the Leinster game.”
The couple decided at the last minute to pass up the weekend’s big rugby match and race instead to Rome.
“We’re not particularly religious people at all,” said Anne. “The fact that we’re here I think shows what the Pope had that was special. He reached out to the world and brought the love out in people’s hearts.”
The length and breadth of John Paul’s reach was also evident in the form Brother James Dungdung. A farmer’s son born in poverty in rural south India where Christianity is a minority religion, Brother James is now a seminarian at the Pontifical University of St Thomas Aquinus in Rome where John Paul once also studied.
James had to wait almost 30 years for his chance to pursue the calling he first became vaguely aware of in 1986 during the Pope’s first visit to his homeland.
My professor tells us: “Can you imagine? You never know God’s call. The Pope was just like you, sitting where you are now.”
