The Pope greets guests, ignoring the guest closest to him. (CNS/Paul Haring)
A neat little sidebar from Monday's visit to the elderly of Sant'Eigidio... From CNS's papal photographer...
Pope not bugged by small creatures
by Paul Haring
VATICAN CITY, Nov. 12 — This is not news, nor is it important in the scheme of things. This is just a simple blog post about a simple matter.
On Monday. a bug landed on Pope Benedict XVI’s forehead during a visit to a home for the elderly in Rome.
Instead of brushing his guest away, the pope stayed focused and continued greeting other guests. Five seconds later, the bug left on his own.
The small guest, right, flies away after spending five seconds meeting the pope.
This was not the Pope’s first encounter with a wayward insect. In 2009, a spider took his time climbing up the Pope’s cape as he gave a speech inside the presidential palace in the Czech Republic. While the pope seemed not to notice and did not react, the incident drew a lot of international media attention. In fact, the spider garnered more media coverage than the Pope’s speech.
Pope Benedict XVI is known for his immense powers of concentration. This is likely why he seems to not be bothered by little creatures.
One thing that has not been commented enough upon by commentators galore on the Pope's visit to the Sant'Egidio home for the elderly was that, in more ways than one, the Pope himself is the best proof of his now much-quoted remark - "It is beautiful [or wonderful] to be old"!
TV anchor Stefano Maria Paci, who covers the Pope for Italy's SKy TV, wrote this beautiful reportage on the Pope's visit to the Sant'Egidio home 'Viva gli anziani!'.
The elderly of Sant'Egidio:
Tea with Benedict XVI -
and rediscovering that life is good
by Stefano Maria Paci
Vatican Anchor, Italian Sky TV
Translated from
November 14, 2012
"To have tea with the Pope is certainly not something that happens every day, so you will excuse me if I am still a bit emotional and confused," the elderly woman says.
I sit down at a table which still has cookies, teacups and a slice of strudel from that tea. Benedict XVI had just taken his leave from the apartment of Signora Maria, where he had sat down with her and one of her friends, Giovanna, later meeting with the other occupants of this home for the elderly run by the Sant'Egidio Community on the Gianiculum Hill overlooking the Vatican.
As he left the home, the Pope said, "I leave this place feeling younger" - having spent some time in a 'family home' for people his age.
Signora Maria has gentle eyes, well-groomed hair and the kind smile of an old aunt. And much faith.
"I realize now that you ask me", she notes, "that my friend Giovanna and I hardly gave the Pope a chance to speak. We spoke to him about our life. The difficulties we encounter, those that we have had. And the fact that, notwithstanding, faith accompanies our days, and because of this, there is no sadness. He listened attentively, he ate a cookie, and then told us he was really happy to be with us, that this visit was giving him a great deal".
It might have been just any weekday, but there was nothing ordinary about Monday, Nov. 12, at the Viva gli Anziani (Long live the elderly) home. The forecast had been for rain, and in many parts of Italy, floods were disastrous, but during the Pope's visit, there was not a single raindrop.
Things were certainly 'upside down/, since the protagonists of the day were the elderly, those whom society mostly ignores, or considers to be obstacles not just for their families but for politicians and institutions.
And all the persons who had waited for hours crowded on the street outside the home - many of them young people - might well have envied the elderly in the home who could meet and talk to the Pope rather informally.
And how strange it is that this German Pope - who does not have the sympathy of the mass media, who for years have (mis)treated him as they have not done with any Pope in modern times even if he is adored by the Catholic world, who have come to his audiences and Angelus assemblies in numbers greater than his beloved predecessor, now Blessed John Paul II - has often been described by the media as someone who does not remotely possess his predecessor's communicative abilities, and yet, everytime he finds himself free from formal protocol, he astonishes and touches the hearts of all those who see or meet him.
And so it was Monday, at the Viva gli Anziani home, when he was not a Pontiff meeting a 'category' of persons, the elderly, but was first of all an elderly man himself who had become Pope and who was meeting other elderly persons, exchanging looks of reciprocal sympathy, person to person.
"I am here among you as the Bishop of Rome but also as an elderly man visiting his contemporaries," he said to them. He laughed at their jokes, lovingly caressed those who seem to be afflicted most in health, talking to them and listening to their stories, so many and so diverse, and often visibly moved.
He goes from one room to another, from one apartment to the next, not like a head of state taking a census of his subjects or a head of government who seeks their consensus, but as a man who is close to others who may be suffering from living out their old age with difficulty. But who have also learned much from life. Every room, every apartment, a story, a life recounted in brief words.
There is Margherita, who was a professor of art history. Some of the volunteers who work at the home were her students, who told the Pope, "When her situation had become truly difficult, we brought her here".
"You did right," sid the Pope, who chats with her about the books on Caravaggio and Fra Angelico on her table. Volunteers help her as she gets up to kiss the Fisherman's ring on the Pope's left hand.
In the next apartment, the Pope meets Vincenzo who is introduced to him as "the youngest here - he is only 73". "So then, you are very young," the Pope says, not infallibly, "you are 15 years younger than me!" Benedict XVI is, of course,'only' 85, not 88.
Another apartment is occupied by Vincenzo and Sandro, who were masons and street pavers - illness had made them unable to live by themselves and so they came to this home. "The Lord has been good to us," they told the Pope, who replied, "In our old age, friends help us live better".
Then it was the turn of Felicetta, white-haired and wearing her Sunday best: "Dear Pope," she said, taking his hands affectionately and addressing him familiarly
[second person singular, rather than the deferential third person singular], as if he were a relative she had not seen in a long time, "how happy we all are to see you!" To which he replied, "I too am happy to be here!"
The Pope also met Mario and Anna, who prepare the food for the residents of the home who have no relatives to care for them, as well as for other elderly who live by themselves at home.
"They are often by themselves and rather sad, Holy Father", Mario said, "but on Sundays, they are full of joy..."
"Because they can be with others and it is the day of the Lord", the Pope broke in. "Yes, but especially because they can eat well!", Mario said. The Pope raised his hands to heaven and broke out laughing - he was not expecting that.
Another volunteer, Pierina, helps gypsy children and lives in Tor de Cenci, a place which the city recently cleared of gypsy makeshift homes. "It was terrible," she said, "especially for the children.
"How sad for the kids!" the Pope exclaimed softly. And Pierina said, "I have continued to go visit them where they were taken". The Pope said, "Brava! They must be very grateful to you". All the time, he was holding Pierina's hands tightly in his, as if to ask her to bring something of him to the children.
The Pope's white hair, escaping from his white zucchetto, underscores what he has in common with the white-haired wards in this home, persons who have nothing except what the home provides them, except for those who still have families who come to visit them.
And the hands...
"That contact between the finger of God and the finger of man," Papa Ratzinger had said some days earlier in the Sistine Chapel, on the 50th anniversary of the inauguration of Michelangelo's ceiling frescoes, "demonstrates that the world is not a product of obscurity, of chaos or of absurdity, but that it comes from an act of love: God relating to his creatures".
At the Sant'Egidio home on Monday, hands also said a lot. All the time, the Pope's hands were entwined with those of the person he was talking to. The hands of a man who meets all kinds of men and women, the hands of a Pope who holds in his the hands of those that God has given him as children, no matter what their age.
Like Enrichetta, who is 91, and who was therefore 6 when the Pope was born. In a country far from here. But here, their paths have crossed, on this home atop the Gianiculum hill.
She greets him formally in the name of the community: "I have learned so much from my friendship with persons young and old alike what it is to help others who are even weaker than me. I have learned to defend the value of life, especially those of older people who have been abandoned by their families, when visiting them in other institutions and taking up their cause as the Sant'Egidio Community does. I do not feel useless. With age, I do not eat as much as I used to, but prayer is my principal nourishment".
The Pope met with Attilia, who has passed the century mark. He takes her hands in his like a grandson would.
He goes on to an apartment shared by two 90-year-old women. "They have both lost their husbands and children, and so they came to us," he was told. Benedict XVI blesses them with a sign of the Cross on their foreheads.
He was introduced to Maria, who was born in Sotto il Monte, birthplace of John XXIII. "So you knew Pope John," the Pope asked her. "Yes," she nodded, seated but outfitted with a nasogastric tube. "She has been receiving food this way for three years," a volunteer told the Pope, "but she is happy". He said, "Yes, because she is in your good hands". And Maria nodded again.
Good hands is what the volunteers represent - young people, persons in midlife, even some elderly - who help the wards of Sant'Egidio face their daily life and to keep their dignity, whatever their personal circumstances.
There is a family from Haiti, who had lost all they possessed in the terrible floods in recent years, including all their relatives. But good Christians, whom Christ had taken hold of, took hold of them in turn, and brought them here to the care of more 'good hands'.
The Viva gli Anziani home is a beautiful and happy place. It is housed in a multi-unit building with a beautiful garden in the Janiculum, which is a prestigious address in Rome. A happy 'island', perhaps, but the Sant'Egidio officials availed of the Pope's visit to speak to them of their plans.
Its president, Mario Marazziti, told the Pope: "All it takes would be 60 cents a day for each needy senior citizen so that every elderly person in Rome can be helped at home, without having to enter institutes, hospitals or homes for the aged. If such a project could get started in one city, it could become a reference and model for everyone since it shows that it can be done".
Meanwhile, this home on the Janiculum is one attempt, among so many carried out in the Catholic world, to assist those who are most in need, out of the sheer abundance of gratitude felt by those who have found meaning in their life and in the world.
"I know very well the difficulties, the problems and the limitations of old age," the Pope said to the residents in his formal address, but added realistically, "and I know that for many, these difficulties have been aggravated by the economic crisis".
But, speaking as an elderly among his fellow elderly, the Pope continued: "I wish to tell all elderly people, even as I am aware of the difficulties brought along by our advanced age, that it is a beautiful thing to be old. We should never allow ourselves to be imprisoned by sadness. We have received the gift of long life. Life is beautiful even at our age, notwithstanding the obstacles. May we always carry the joy of feeling loved by God, rather than sadness. When the days seem long and empty, made more difficult by the lack of tasks and of contact with others, never be discouraged. You are a richness for society, even in sickness and suffering".
And perhaps the most moving statement: "The prayers of the elderly can protect the world, perhaps aiding society in more effective ways than the active efforts of many".
Words from an elderly Pope, soon to be 86. who has a fresh outlook on reality: that there is another world, the world of the elderly, in this world.
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 15/11/2012 19:02]