A Day at the Vatican

I was listening to NPR a couple of days ago. They were trying to cover the Pope's death, the mourning, the pilgrims in Rome, etc.

They had this guy there. The interviewer spoke gravely about the situation; you can't really get any more serious than the death of Pope John Paul II (JP2 to his friends). Evidently, they had a 'guy on the scene' in Rome waiting to see the Pope's body. He was in line, and turned out to be a student studying in Italy.

And here's where it got odd. It sounded a lot like when I'd call a friend, and they would be waiting to enter a club or some party in Hollywood. The gravity of the situation sort of disappeared with the first words out of the guy's mouth. The interviewer (who I think was at KPCC) asked something along the lines of, "Are you a faithful Catholic? Would you say you are a religious, or spiritual person?"

His reply was something like, "Me? No." Of course, I can only relate the gist of the conversation, since I did not stop the car and write down the conversation.

"So you're there more for the...historical aspect?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I was here in Italy anyway and he seemed to be getting really sick, and everybody was already gathering here. So I just came down. It's not really far from where I live, anyway."

The interviewer continued. "Tell me, I understand that there's-"

"Wow, you hear that? There's people clapping."

The interviewer asked an amused, yet confused, "Clapping?"

And in the background, you can hear a rythmic clapping as people also sing along (I think in Italian). "What?" the guy asked.

"We hear the clapping," the interviewer repeated.

"Yeah," the guy said. "They're clapping. People are clapping and...uh...singing."

"So what's it like?" the interviewer asked, obviously trying to ask an open-ended enough question to hopefully get more than a few words out of him. "What is the atmosphere?"

At this, the guy seemed to get the hint that they weren't paying him to dick around and make small talk. "Oh, well, it's really...packed. There's a lot of people here, and the mood is really down--somber. And yet people seem to be celebrating the life of the Pope. There are a lot of people here waiting to enter the place over there...and the line's moving really slowly." He sort of rambled on about nothing in particular--that some were crying, some were upset. Basically, he might as well have been watching it on TV and telling someone what he's seeing.

That? That was strange.