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Vatican City

Don’t Grope the Pope!

dave fox

every Wednesday morning, the pope holds a service for 8,000 followers at the Vatican. He rides down the aisle with the top down on his bullet-proof buggy, the popemobile. He kisses babies, blesses the crowd, and does what he can to promote peace and love. Thousands of pilgrims travel thousands of miles to hear the pontiff. A few of them freak out.

I’m not Catholic, and I realize that as an outsider, describing religious pilgrims as “freaking out” might be begging for a coach-class ticket to Hell. But please keep in mind, I was trying to help maintain the sanctity of this event.

I work as a tour guide in Scandinavia, and seeing as it was now February, there wasn’t a heavy demand for my services, so I went down to Rome to stow away on a tour my friend Don was leading.

“For those of you who are interested,” Don told our group, “I’ve arranged for an audience with Pope John Paul II.” I had never had an audience with the pope before. I decided to tag along and watch respectfully from the sidelines.

I went to the Vatican expecting a solemn affair. It felt more like a rowdy World Cup soccer game. Mexican and Russian delegations held up national flags as they waited for His Holiness. Other groups waved matching colored scarves. The Americans were the most boisterous. A group of about 200 college students chanted and clapped in unison as they unfurled a large, spray-painted banner. “John Paul Two, we love you!” they cried, hoping, like groupies at a rock concert, to lure the pope onto the stage at the Vatican’s indoor auditorium.

I wondered what the scene must look like in summer, when the same service would take place out in Saint Peter’s Square. The Roman sun would blaze down on the crowd, causing those who had forgotten sunscreen to turn the color of lobsters.

Today’s papal audience would take place inside a sprawling hall that was filled to capacity. I was five feet from the center aisle, where one of the world’s most influential people would walk by in mere moments. I wanted one good photo. As the time grew closer, people began shoving: pope hooligans.

Everyone was standing on chairs now—everyone but the young nun beside me. She looked bewildered. A Puerto Rican couple tried to squeeze past a woman in my tour group, but my fellow tour member wouldn’t let them through. “I’ve been waiting 45 minutes,” she insisted. “This is my spot.” A barrage of Spanish insults poured from the Puerto Ricans, along with one word in English: “knife.” I was busy protecting my own vantage point. There was a shove from behind, and as I stumbled off my chair, I watched another man’s video camera crash down. I had seen tamer crowds at Pearl Jam concerts.

I had seen tamer crowds at Pearl Jam concerts. Finally, the pope entered.

Finally, the pope entered. Everyone gasped. Just as I snapped my photo, a rugby match broke out in which the guy behind me attempted to get closer to God by flinging himself over the crowd to fondle the pope’s robe. I ended up with a photo of the man’s back.

My new digital camera was taking an eternity to cycle for another picture. Then, just as it warmed up, the pope moved, perfectly centered, into my viewfinder. It would be the photo of a lifetime. I pressed the button. The red-eye light flashed. My camera beeped feebly. And just as the shutter clicked, up went the hand of the woman beside me, right in front of my lens. I took a perfectly centered picture of her camera.

Twenty seconds later, the pope was far away, continuing his journey to the stage. I had just seen him up close, only it was through my camera lens—like seeing him on TV. Now he was a vague white blur off in the distance. I had a photo to prove how close I was, but I felt like I hadn’t seen him at all.

On our way out, after the English part of the service, the woman who had claimed to be wielding a knife was waiting for us. She stepped in our way, waving her fist. “Let’s go outside,” she said menacingly to the woman she had jostled with earlier.

“You want to fight ... in the Vatican?!” I asked.

“She pushed me!” she sputtered. “You want to fight? I like to fight!”

Well, I don’t like to fight. Especially in the presence of prominent world religious leaders. Instead, I seized the opportunity to feed my ego. For days, I had been an off-duty tour guide. Don was the one in charge, and I was the lost tourist. I was used to being in the spotlight, commanding the tour group’s attention. Don wasn’t with us right now. This was my chance to be a hero. I spoke French. I could explain to the Swiss soldiers who guard the Vatican what was going on.

It’s difficult to ask a Vatican guard to protect you, though. Their main weapon in defending Vatican City is the court-jester costumes they wear. If anybody tries to attack, the guard moves into the attacker’s way, causing him or her to fall down in a convulsive fit of laughter at unquestionably the world’s silliest military uniforms.

I tried to keep a straight face, but I had another problem. I had skipped French class the day the teacher taught us how to say, “This woman is a psychotic freak who is threatening to stab us in the presence of the pope.”

After several botched attempts, I constructed a halfway grammatical sentence. “This woman is being very violent. She is attacking us.” The guard looked at me like I was the insane one. Our assailant smirked calmly in the distance. Desperate, I switched to English. “She’s following us,” I said. “She’s crazy. Will you please make sure she doesn’t follow us outside?”

He didn’t understand me. I was begging this man to protect us, but he wasn’t getting it. And the only thing he really looked capable of doing was juggling and playing the lute.

The woman followed us outside. I don’t know for how long she stalked us. We ignored her and she eventually went away. Perhaps the Vatican guards figured out what was up and stopped her. Perhaps it finally dawned on her that slugging somebody in front of the pope might cost her a few points in the afterlife.

Mob psychology makes people do crazy things. It’s why there’s football violence in England. It’s why people get trampled at rock concerts. I had thought that at a papal audience, of all places, people would respect each other. But when you put 8,000 strangers in a room together for any reason, something far more powerful than sanity or spirituality takes over.

DAVE FOX is a freelance humor and travel writer, a public speaker, and a Rick Steves tour guide. In 2004, he won the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop Book Proposal Contest for his book of travel humor essays, Getting Lost: Mishaps of an Accidental Nomad. This story is excerpted from that book. He teaches classes on how to write more vivid travel journals (www. traveljournaling.com) and is writing a book on the same topic. You can find him at www.davesbook.com.