Last year, I was blessed to see Pope Francis give the General Audience while on I was on pilgrimage (btw, check out The Catholic Traveler for great Catholic pilgrimages). After Katie and I got our tickets for the General Audience, we started making plans for where and when to meet. Last year, my pilgrimage leader had us lining up at 7:00 a.m., and without giving away any of his secret methods, let’s just say we ended up with perfect seats that may have involved me nearly tripping over a woman and her children, as well as nearly accidentally body-slamming a Swiss Guard. Okay, I exaggerate. A little.

After describing to Katie how we got such great seats, we came to the decision that we wouldn’t do anything crazy to get seats. We were okay with meeting at 8:00 a.m. instead of 7:00 a.m., and if we didn’t get seats in the front row of the second section, that was okay, too. We’d be happy with any sort of perimeter seat where we’d get a nice drive-by from Pope Francis.

So at 8:00 a.m, I met Katie and her roommate at a piazza near St. Peter’s, and then we walked the rest of the way to the square together. There seemed to be a long line ahead of us. We shrugged it off. Oh well.

Then Katie’s roommate said, “I think we’re actually in the wrong line. I see people going on up ahead. I’ll go check it out.”  To make a long story short, we think we were actually standing in line for the group of people who get seats up on the stage with Pope Francis. Oops.

So we  left that line and soon found ourselves at the security checkpoint. A quick scan of our bags (was anyone even looking?), and we were in the square. They hadn’t even opened the second section of seats yet, and the first section only had people sitting around the perimeter. The center was all empty. Hmm. I guess the square doesn’t fill up as much when there isn’t a huge canonization happening the next Sunday.

So we waited near the front of the second section after the guards told us they wouldn’t open it until the first section filled. Slowly, more people filled in the first section, but more people also milled around the second section like we did. The three of us wondered where exactly they would open up the barricades for us to enter.

Suddenly, we heard shouts from behind us. The guards had opened the second section from the back, directly opposite us, and a crowd of German high school students were running directly for the seats that were just on the other side of the barricade from us–a mere two feet from us. There was no way we could run all the way around the barricade and get any sort of decent seats. They would all be taken by then.

“Throw your bags over the barricade and onto those seats!” I yelled to my companions.

Then the British girl and I lifted the white sheet that hangs in front of the wooden barricade.

“I’ll try to climb through,” said the British girl. The barricade has wooden beams crossed like an X. She tried to crawl through the lowest opening in the X because it was hard to lift the white sheet very high. She got halfway through and said, “I can’t make it!”

Peering over the barricade, I spotted the Germans. They were halfway to our seats by now.

Ducking down, I lifted the white sheet higher. “I’m going for one of these side pockets,” I announced. I thrust my head through the “hole” at the right side of the X. I figured if I got half my body through, the other half could follow.

Did I mention I was  wearing a denim pencil skirt while doing this?

“Are you kidding me?” cried Katie. “You’re actually going to fit through there!?!”

With my head and right arm through, I grabbed hold of the plastic gray chair I’d thrown my purse on.

“Yep!” I cried to Katie, and with nothing but sheer determination, I wiggled my body through the opening. The British girl followed my example.

“I can’t believe you two just did that! I mean, I’m glad you did, but  I’m going to walk around now.”

The British girl and I sat across the three chairs we’d thrown our purses on and waited for Katie.

What was that about not doing anything crazy to get those front row, second section seats?

There had been threats of rain on all the weather maps, but the morning ended up so sunny, we put on sunscreen used my umbrella for shade. The pope talked about how death affects families (you can find his talk online, I’m sure), and we got a really nice, slow drive-by from Pope Francis. Check out my Facebook page for the video.

The afternoon was spent mostly working on homework. Then in the evening, I took the school’s guided tour of Isola Tiberina, which is a tiny island located in the middle of the Tiber River. For those of you who read the Speak, Pray, Cook blog posts last year, you may remember this as the island where I had my cooking class.

After the tour, I went out to dinner with ten other students, a fun collection of people from the U.S., Turkey, Russia, and Bulgaria!