"The Closest Thing to Heaven on Earth"

Believe it or not, the title of this post does not apply to gelato (though three scoops of gelato does come pretty close to Heaven).
Instead, it;s all about the amazing, inspiring feeling that comes from seeing thousands of people gathered together to celebrate the Church's most jubilant holiday.

Anyway, I'm a little swamped with work (as the end of the semester is rapidly approaching) so I'll try to keep this short.
We did many many things, walked a lot and saw more churches than I can count, potentially every obelisk in the city, the Trevi fountain, Spanish Steps, Colosseum, Roman Forum etc.

But, more importantly, we had mass on Holy Thursday with the pope at San Giovanni in Laterano (St. John Lateran) and stations of the cross outside the Colosseum with the pope on Good Friday. Finally, on Saturday we had a tour of the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's and on Easter Sunday we had mass with Papa Benedicto!!!
Seriously though, we were sitting in dresses in the pouring rain for 5 hours and were literally so cold we couldn't stop shivering but it was SO WORTH IT. It was an amazing experience - especially hearing the pope deliver Easter blessings in 53 different language (I can personally say that his French is flawless and I've heard enough to know that his Hindi and Swahili both sound spot on).





And I got to see Fr. Matthew on Monday which was awesome! It was cool to just hang out with him and be shown around Rome. I'm really glad I got to see him. And he introduced us to a friend of his who is an Irish Augustinian brother... very cool, fun guy. :D
It was a great day!




Finally, we may or may not have had pizza and gelato twice a day, everyday. ;)