In the middle of December, I was lucky enough to make it home to Colorado for the annual Society of Military Orthopaedic Surgeons conference and combine it with a few days of leave. The conference was very interesting and it was nice to actually meet some other military surgeons. The Combat Extremity Course was one of the highlights and the Navy requires it for ortho docs getting deployed and it for those taking call during Naples New Year's Eve celebrations (http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110101/wl_nm/us_italy_newyear_1). Seriously though, it was especially good to see my family, do some skiing, and enjoy being home for an early Colorado Christmas. I haven’t been away very long, so being back in the States really wasn’t weird at all. Not that I needed any convincing, but America is still the best thing going. I wouldn’t go as far as to say that I was ready to return to Naples, but soon it was time to head back across the ocean.
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| Home in Loveland |
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| Sure, it was at Vail and I know it looks bad (especially when my TAD orders the CO signed off on said Caufield-VAIL)... but they don't have conferences at places no one wants to go. |
My first day back at work on December 23rd was painless enough, especially since the whole hospital was on the holiday schedule. I mostly spent it catching up on work emails, charting, and doing the required Navy online courses that needed to be completed by the end of the year. (So many courses to click through… I wouldn’t say that I am especially proactive about getting them all done. And thanks to Wikileaks and Army PFC Bradley Manning, I am certain that I can look forward to many additional ones in the years to come). While discussing some upcoming Navy career decisions that I will be making soon with my most senior partner, he mentioned that he and his family had decided not to travel anywhere for the holiday. He said that if there was anywhere I wanted to go, I should do it and he would cover the Christmas orthopaedic call for me. One of the emails I had received had been about a USO/USAA-sponsored bus trip taking the single sailors to Rome for the Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican. Initially, I hadn’t given it much thought before since I was on call, but since he was offering… I decided that was an opportunity I shouldn’t pass up. The bus ride didn’t include tickets to get inside of Saint Peter’s Basilica, but I would be able to see the Mass from the Square and that would still be pretty interesting. Luckily, there were still two remaining open seats on the bus, so I reserved one for me and then talked my friend Susie into making the trip as well (and thanks to our friend Jo for helping convince her to go). After finishing up at work, we decided to go check with the chaplain to see if there were any extra tickets to the Mass. But before we even made it into his office we bumped into our friend Abby who just happened to have extra tickets. Another Festivus miracle… Thanks, Dan and Abby!
Christmas Eve in Naples started out as a sunny, beautiful, mid-60s day. (The warm December weather is another thing that I kind of dig about being here. If only the Italians could figure out how to keep the inside of the buildings warmer than the outside…) However, it started to pour rain just as we boarded the bus (another common occurrence at this time of year… November-December was like being in Seattle, but apparently that was worse than usual). After a 3 hour bus ride, we were dropped off on a street just outside of Vatican City at about 3:30 PM. It was still raining like crazy, but fortunately there was a souvenir shop selling umbrellas for only 3 Euros - I thought that was pretty good deal and had been prepared to drop much more than that. Our group trekked up the hill and into St. Peter’s Square. At that time it was surprisingly empty (or not surprisingly when considering the weather and the previous day’s bombings of the Swiss and Chilean embassies in Rome by anarchists).
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| At the Rome USO |
After snapping some pictures and taking in the large central Nativity scene and Christmas tree, we made our way to the nearby Rome USO office where they had a Christmas reception prepared for us. The USO hosts were very welcoming and they had a very nice spread for us to enjoy. After some sandwiches and champagne, Susie and I made our plan to tour some of Rome before heading over to the Mass which was to start at 10pm (but is still called Midnight Mass…). However, one of our USO hosts recommended that we be in line by 6pm if we wanted to actually sit inside the Basilica, since more tickets are distributed than there are actual seats inside. So after drinking one last glass of champagne there (and taking a paper cup roadie), we headed back out into the rain and made our way back to St. Peter’s Square.
There were already hundreds of people lined up on the right side of St. Peter’s Square, if you are looking at the Basilica, and the line continued to grow. Aside from taking turns wandering around the square and making conversation with the Americans in front of us, that was pretty much it for the next 3-plus hours… (Our new American friends were a mother and her 20-something daughter. This was the mom’s 5th straight Vatican Christmas Eve Mass experience, so she gave us some tips on where to try to sit and better see the Pope.) As we waited in the rain, the line soon grew to encircle the entire inner square. Fairly quickly, our new 3 Euro umbrellas began to leak water on their underside, thus confirming a Ryan Caufield Life Truth: “You get what you pay for.” Still, the water was coming down pretty hard and they were definitely better than nothing.
Finally, there was a stir at the front of the line and the crowd began to surge forward as the guards opened the first gates. At this point, the mass of Italians (trust me, I KNOW they were Italians) that had been accumulating at the right side of the front of the line grew exponentially and began pushing their way into the line. Fortunately, enough people put up a fight and we still made it into the gate without too much difficulty from the interlopers.
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| The rush begins... |
There was a series of 4 staggered, wooden gates that we had to pass through (just like cattle being herded on a ranch), while showing our tickets to the guards at each. After that it was a scramble up the side steps of the Basilica to the waiting series of x-ray machines and metal detectors. Of course, the security line we chose did not have these machines turned on yet… After losing some significant ground to the lines with their electronics already on, we finally made it up the last steps and walked through the main doors of St. Peter’s Basilica.
I’m lucky enough to have been inside St. Peter’s before, but the sheer immensity of it was again striking. The place is just huge and awe inspiring. (It can reportedly seat 60,000 inside, but I read that only 10,000 were there this evening. I was not surprised this was all with so many areas blocked off and tightly controlled by security.) Unfortunately, this was not the time for sightseeing and we had to continue our rush down the roped and walled pathways for best aisle-side seats. The first 2/3rds of the seats closest to the altar were full, but at that point there was a row that only had two people separating us from the center aisle. Not too bad at all.
The rest of the Basilica filled up pretty quickly and soon people were crammed into their seats and everyone was snapping pictures of the scene before us. After waiting for approximately an hour, the processional began walking down the aisle. First young priests, then middle-age priests, then old priests, and then very old priests.
Following this were presumably the cardinals (also very old), and then finally Pope Benedict XVI. It was quite the thing to experience.
After making their way down the length of the Basilica, the clergy took their place near and upon on the altar and the Mass began. The initial readings were in a variety of different languages – English, French, Spanish, German, Polish (maybe…), and some others I did not recognize. The remainder of the Mass was in Latin and Italian – so I didn’t know exactly what was being said in the homily. But the translated text is here: http://www.oregonlive.com/living/index.ssf/2010/12/text_of_pope_benedict_xvis_hom.html.
I was really curious how they were going to coordinate Holy Communion. We were all jammed into our tightly packed seats, which could only be entered and exited from the outer one side. As with all the other Italian Masses I have attended, it turned into a wild, sans line, free for all. The priests walked down the center aisle with the Eucharist and people just began making their way from the outer seats toward the inner wall protecting the aisle from the masses. Fortunately, I didn’t have far to go for Communion and was able to then just sit in my chair and try to make myself as small of an obstacle as possible as people passed in front of, behind, and over me.
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| Yeah, I know this doesn't look that bad... but this is the last of the stragglers after everyone else had gone. It was much crazier earlier before I decided to take a picture. |
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| Credit where credit is due... Susie took this pic, which is probably the best of the batch. But she took it with my little Casio, so it's still a team effort... Nice work, Susie. |
As for us, we took it all in and then began to hustle out of the Basilica, across the square, and through the streets back to the waiting bus bound for Naples - which was to leave at 12:30 AM sharp. We made it at 12:28… Christmas Eve Mass at the Vatican was an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime experience that I will never forget. And it definitely helped make being away from home, family, and friends a lot easier.
