Tuesday, March 12, 2013

As eyes are focused on Rome...

...and prayers and thoughts are with the Conclave...we will we praying in a place of peculiar significance...we are off to Wadowice, the small town not far from Krakow, where a Pope was born and baptised, where he grew up and went to school, and where today the parish church will be a place of intercession  for the next chapter of the Church's history as it unfolds...

It is so strange, this interregnum: the sense of unreality hasn't yet faded, even as Papa Benedict went by helicopter from Rome out to the hills and the lake, even as his name was omitted from the Canon of the Mass, even as we tried to get used to the words "Pope Emeritus". Here in Krakow the layers of history are the background to everyday life and you do get a sense of how things move on...the era of Communism is rarely mentioned except as history, the mobile-phone shops jostle with elegant cafes with a vaguely pre-1914 feel and with smart restaurants that definitely belong to the 21st century, Pope John Paul is honoured in statues and plaques, and the Church flourishes and goes on...

No comments: