Chronicle of Wednesday 27 August

Today promised to be very special. We were going to see the Pope. For the first time, we would be in front of His Holiness Leo XIV in person. The audience began at around 10, so we had to arrive quite early to be able to get in without any problems.

At around 7:00 the vans that were to drop the Seniors team at St Peter’s Square left the Hotel Midas. A quarter of an hour later the coaches also left from Casa Zeffirino. The very early hours we were getting up at didn’t stop our pilgrims from wearing big smiles. The thought of seeing the Pope was stronger than sleepiness.

Once we arrived, the queue was long. It went round several streets, but with patience we pilgrims gradually went into the Paul VI Hall in groups. In the end people went in group by group, as the crowd wanting to get to the front seemed endless. The Seniors group was left behind at first, but cunning and divine providence meant that, at first, they were able to get through the security checks at record speed, skipping the last stretch of the queue. Even so, at first they had been left at the doors of the hall, which, according to the organisers, was full.

Meanwhile, inside, we were moving fast. First, we managed to get the families of children and young people with disabilities seated in the front row. Later, with a bit of pressure and a few prayers, we gradually filled the front rows with married couples with small children and kept taking seats under the incredulous gaze of the organisers, who turned a blind eye but were starting to smell a rat. Several young pilgrims tried to fit more of the group into the front seats by putting children on their parents’ laps and hurriedly clearing the rows further back so that we could all sit together at the front. Apart from causing a bit of confusion, this allowed us to ask the stewards to let in the part of the group that was still outside, on the grounds that, if they hadn’t been let in for lack of space, that problem no longer existed. They agreed and, just before the audience began, the Seniors group paraded down the central aisle and was also able to sit very close, so the group was together again.

When the Holy Father appeared on the stage, a great cry of joy broke out among those present. We couldn’t contain our emotion at meeting for the first time the man who had been elected Vicar of Christ on earth only a few months before. There, in front of us, closer than anyone, was the successor of Peter. Then the Holy Father greeted the hall and spoke to us about the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Olives, and showed how He faces the hour of his passion with freedom and courage, not as a victim, but as one who gives his life out of love. Jesus lets himself be captured to set his disciples free, and in this way reveals that true hope does not consist in avoiding pain, but in persevering in love even in the darkness. His attitude teaches that only what is given away flourishes and that, even in human weakness and failure, God opens a path to new life. Finally, he made an urgent appeal to end the war in the Holy Land, calling for the release of the hostages, a permanent ceasefire, respect for humanitarian law and a sincere search for peace, imploring the intercession of Mary, Queen of Peace.

The parish community was also represented on the other side of the barriers. The Morer Barroso family, Alejandro Recolons, Pau Sarsanedas, the Bedoya couple and the León siblings had the privilege of greeting His Holiness in person. Marc and Marina gave the Pope a pilgrim’s book, which he received warmly, and told him about the pilgrimage we had made from Padua to Rome and how we had all come as a family from our parishes in Barcelona to see him. His Holiness told them that he prays for all of us.

After the audience, the families went their separate ways and the Seniors and PSP groups went for lunch, and afterwards we all met up at the church of St John Lateran, where we celebrated Holy Mass. Some pilgrims were also able to climb the Holy Stairs, which, according to Christian tradition, the Emperor Constantine had brought from Pontius Pilate’s praetorium at the request of St Helena. They are the stairs Jesus climbed on Good Friday to be judged.

After dinner at the hotel, we went off to rest, having prayed Compline all together, at the end of a day full of strong emotions that we finish very tired but deeply happy and close to the Lord.