Palm Sunday mass

This was the most beautiful mass I've ever attended...so many different languages and people of different backgrounds coming together to celebrate Palm Sunday at St. Peter's Square. Amazing.

Woke up WAAAAAY too early for a Sunday to get to the Vatican and stand in line with about 50 other people who were there before us. Some [anal east-coast American] lady and her [equally anal east-coast American] friends kept insisting that we needed tickets to get in, and that there was another line to get in without tickets...but what church requires tickets for mass?! The day I'm required a ticket to sit in mass is the day I lose faith in the Catholic church. Nah, I'm just kidding, but seriously. So Chris walked around to find this supposed non-ticket line...that lady must've stayed up all night or something, because there was no such line. He came back and stood in our place while I went to ask a Vatican police officer...who said we did NOT need tickets to get in (as did his two police homies). Pshhhh...I ran back and said loudly, "You don't need tickets, what the heck!" and made sure those retards in line heard me. =P

The gates opened at 730am (we got there around 6)...and there was this STAMPEDE of people rushing through metal detectors to get into the square and get seats. Nuns were running like marathon runners! Geez...there were about 1000 people in line at 730...with like, 10,000 seats. Chris and I managed to get pretty close seats (close as in, we could actually see the altar and whatnot), three rows behind those people in line. HAHA suckaaaaaas!

Philippine flag representing!

Anywho, we finished writing postcards to kill the time...and then around 9am, I seriously had to pee. I know the line to the women's bathroom is usually long, NEVER had I seen it this long. It took me 45 minutes to get through, causing me to miss the opening procession. Plus the guards wouldn't let all the women (coincidentally, there were about two men) back to their seats; understandable, so we wouldn't disturb the procession. Ah well...I just heard a bunch of random cheering from the crowd and big palm leaves walking down the center aisle.

Finally got back to my seat, where Chris was freaking out because he thought he lost me...at the same time, I was freaking out about the same thing, getting separated in a crowd of a million people. Got back to my seat about 2-3 minutes after mass started, so I wasn't too worried about missing much. Different parts of mass were said in different languages...the First Reading was in English, the Second in German...and then there was this part where people said something in Spanish, Russian, Filipino, Swahili, Portuguese, and French. Cooool! Even the Creed was in Latin, which Chris and I were trying to translate as it was being said. =P

Communion was served to a million people by this army of priests:
There weren't even any lines forming, just blobs of people forming a circle around each priest to receive the Body of Christ. Communion to a million people...that's crazy.

Statue of St. Paul + Pope Benedict on a screen

After mass, a million people just spilled out onto the streets around the Vatican. It was like being in Venice all over again, crashing into people as we walked, exept we were at the Vatican and it was cooler. Don't know if you can tell in this picture, but here are people at mass:
Nuts huh? Supposedly St. Peter's Square can hold up to a million people, and it was pretty full, so there ya go. =P Grabbed lunch and walked back to the hotel...and then knocked out.

And that was the bulk of our day. Going back to Cali tomorrow...it's been fun here, but it's definitely time to go home...