Sunday, May 1, 2011

Rome smells Wojtyla

It was five years ago, after a long and painful agony and a live televised funeral of Pope-King, but his presence is still alive. These days, Rome smells especially Karol Wojtyla. And is that the first Pope from Eastern was deeply Roman. Innate capacity for inculturation and bishop of Rome. The city is hot, especially around the Vatican, pilgrims of the new Blessed.

Most young or almost. Are your 'Papa boys', young people who followed him in his important performances of faith in the various World Youth Days. Those who shouted "Totus tuus" or "John Paul II the whole world loves you." The stage is almost ready and prepared for macrobeatificación. The Plaza de San Pedro is already full of pilgrims from around the world watching, fascinated, to his Blessed adorning Bernini's colonnade.

A square lined with pictures and slogans of Pope Wojtyla. At the entrance of the square, right, his motto and shield. On the left, a giant screen that plays all over the globe travel the pilgrim Pope par excellence, who circled the world several times. In the colonnade on the right, 27 large photos with the highlights of Wojtyla's pontificate.

One for each year. For example, in Year III, the attack, in the ninth, the interreligious meeting in Assisi, in the XI, with Mother Teresa, in the XII, under Gorbachev, in the seventeenth to the UN, in XXIII, in the Western Wall and in the year XXVII, his coffin in the same plaza. On the left, the colonnade is gone, covered by a huge portrait of John Paul II, supported in his famous walking stick topped by a Christ, with one of his favorite slogans enormous character, "will transport Spalancate Christ" (Open the doors to Christ).

The square and divided by sectors, in which they begin to put the 12,000 seats for the first pilgrims to arrive. Gardeners are also beginning to mount a Renaissance garden in honor of Pope Wojtyla, he loved nature. Once completed, it will look more than 20,000 white roses, orange and yellow as well as 700 boxwood plants, 600 flowers of lavender and 15 cypress trees from five meters each.

In the path of Conciliazione, great photos that advertise the event and libraries crowded news about Pope Wojtyla. Meanwhile, in the adjacent streets, street vendors make a killing in May and the pictures hanging on the lampposts proclaimed in the Roman dialect, "We da fa. Semos romani" (Hands.

We Romans). Rome, always dealer, wants to use, once again, the flow of pilgrims that come from the Polish pope's hand. And, by the way, thanks you. No wonder the eternal city was his home for 27 years. In Rome he lived his many moments of glory. From the "not afraid" newly elected Pope, the Jubilee 2000 celebration of the solemn 'mea culpa' for the sins of the Church, through its numerous beatification or his encounters with the great leaders of the twentieth century.

Or the apotheosis of his burial. Wojtyla became the Vatican and Rome therefore, in the main square of the global world. And in Rome also experienced moments of passion. From the obscure financial dealings of Bishop Paul Marcinckus, the assassination of Cedray out of the Swiss Guard, through his numerous visits to the Policlinico Gemelli, and above all, his blood shed in the Plaza de San Pedro after the shooting of Ali Agca .

John Paul II was a pastor of the world's first global Pope. They say that, for this, left the keys in the hands of Vatican curial machinery, but what I never wanted to leave was his shepherd's crook in Rome. Because that is the first title of the Pope. And Rome, the city that was parading emperors and popes, now wants to pay a new tribute to the pontiff who again became the 'caput mundi'.

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