Oasis Update; and memories of the 'Eternal City'

Please forgive sparse and sporadic posting over the past week. Not until last night was I able to solve at least part of the computer problems that have beset and frustrated me this week.Thanks to guidance from Mac, who possesses the patience of Job, I've been able to install Google Chrome. This has meant that I can again access my own dashboard, a facility that had been lost on Saturday morning, on top of not being able to post directly to the blog of 'The guild of Blessed Titus Brandsma', another problem which had plagued me all week..Anyway things should look up now, and with thanks to dear Mac, I'll leave further explanations and 'return' to Rome.

As you know the recent visit, was my first. During my four days in Rome, I learned many  things which intrigued and surprised me. Seasoned visitors to the Eternal City may disregard my reports and find nothing new in them, but I will submit them over coning day in case they  may give others information they do not already regard as in the 'well of course we all know that' category. These things fall into three areas: The present Pope and his Blessed predecessor; facts about the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica; and general things observed about Roman culture. I listed 18  points in my notebook and will deal with only one tonight.. Much of this information was gleaned from the fact that I was privileged to have as my guides, two people who have lived in Rome for several years, one a journalist and the other a seminarian.

1. Blessed John Paul II
 As we passed the relatively huge part of the transept of St. Peter's which is devoted to Confessions, my Seminarian said to me that John Paul had come down there quite frequently, and  anonymously, to hear  Confessions .  Many thoughts raced through my head at this information, two of which were: 1. why should I be surprised to hear this? As a priest of Jesus Christ, he could not do otherwise. He must bind and loose according to his priestly vows. As Successor of Peter, he should be doing that, and he could not and would not neglect, or be prevented from the execution of this part of  his sacred function, least of all because of the trappings of being Pope. 2. How many people would have recognized the voice of their  Blessed Confessor, and how many would have not? For those who did recognize it, had any of them been in the Square on May 1st? Highly likely that they were . I  couldn't begin to contemplate in any depth how they must have felt. And yet I faced it for that fleeting moment in St Peter's on the afternoon of May3.
Then I asked my seminarian whether he thought that Pope Benedict did this too. His answer: 'Well it's possible,  (and of course I thought it was more than likely, for the same reasons that  Blessed John Paul had done it), but we won't know until after he has died.

Tomorrow, DV,  Rigatoni and St Joseph's chapel in St. Peter's plus more, if I can get up to steam.

GBAH,
In Christo pro Papa

J