For me and most of the other Franciscan students our audience with the pope was probably the highlight of our entire ten day break. We got up pretty early and hopped on the metro to the stop outside of Vatican City. We got to the audience at least an hour early in order to find good seats, most of us ended up being about as close to the stage as general tickets can get you.
A small group of our students happened to find a priest or seminarian (I’m not sure) who one of them knew from the United States. This priest/seminarian had a few extra VIP tickets, which he gave to the group. They ended up in the front row almost directly in front of the pope. Even though I wasn’t in the group it was really cool.
The audience itself was really cool. Pope Benedict XVI addressed us on the subject of Lent in several different languages. All in all, it was a great experience. Here are some pictures, I’m sorry that they are all of poor quality.
This is the Paul VI Audience Hall, as seen from my seat.
This is about the clearest picture of the stage that I could get, the pope wasn’t there yet. If you are wondering about the really scary background art thing, I guess it is supposed to be Jesus at the Resurrection. I guess it was constructed for Pope Paul VI who apparently really enjoyed modern art.
Mary and I at the audience. Our friend Matt is the guy who looks angry in the background. I think he did that intentionally, but I don’t remember.
This is the Pope during the audience, once again I’m sorry for the poor quality of the picture, my zoom wasn’t very good and it was having a hard time focusing…
This was about the closest thing that I could get to a picture of Pope Benedict XVI. They had these giant screens on both sides of the stage.
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