pope benedict xvi

Well, at long last, here is the posting I promised earlier. I'll begin with our morning Mass:

The Morning

After departing from the hotel, all the 100+ seminarians from Kenrick-Glennon Seminary went over to Archbishop Stepinac High School for Mass; the chapel was very nice, especially considering how little room for decoration there was. We then proceeded to the Yonkers raceway, which was converted from a raceway into a large parking lot full of charter busses and youth waiting to be ferried over to St. Joseph's Seminary (also called Dunwoodie).

At the Seminary

(Note: I wrote this posting on the bus, but only recently was able to post it to the blog due to a lack of Internet access...) I'm back on a bus again, and just three hours ago I was saying hello to Pope Benedict along with around 25,000 seminarians, religious, priests and youth at the Youth and Seminarian Rally at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, New York. I don't have the time (or the energy) to work on all the pictures right now (including pictures of all the performers on stage before the Pope's arrival), but I will post them all as soon as I can. For now, please pray for a timely and safe return for al those travelling back home today.

Today I was able to take a few up-close pictures of Pope Benedict XVI, and I also was able to touch his hand, along with a few other St. Louis Seminarians. I have posted pictures on my Seminary Website, and I will write a little bit about this experience below.

After an early start on the day, I waited for about eight hours in different lines to enter St. Panteleon Church, to eat lunch, and to get a spot close to where Pope Benedict would be passing by. And it was all worth it—the rain, the sun and the boredom (hey, it's a pilgrimage!). As Pope Benedict passed the group of St. Louis seminarians in the courtyard, I snapped two quick shots (one's a little blurry), and reached out to touch his hand. As an added bonus, Pelé (you know, the soccer player...) walked by earlier that day and I also snapped a couple of pictures of him!

This picture is courtesy of a fellow seminarian, Mike, taken on the evening of August 18, when Pope Benedict XVI arrived in Köln and waved to many thousands of WYD participants from his Mercedes-Benz Popemobile:

Now more than halfway through the Pilgrimage to Koln (Cologne) for World Youth Day 2005, I thought it might be a good idea to reflect a little on the happenings and developments of my journey so far.

Trip to the German Countryside

The seminarians from Kenrick-Glennon had a day planned (the 16th, to be precise) during which we were going to visit a castle (Neuschweinstein I think), tour the countryside on train and visit the wood-carving town of Oberammagau (I think I spelled it wrong). Unfortunately, we did not have much luck doing most of what we had originally planned on doing. It was raining steadily for most of the day, and, after an eight hour train and bus ride, we found that we wouldn't be able to go inside the castle because of the amount of people in line.