Ever been to a papal audience?

Amy Welborn has — and she posted this neat little account, with pictures, over at her blog.

I’ve been to two of them — one in St. Peter’s Square, the other in the Paul VI Hall, both with JPII — and Amy captures the ambience and atmosphere perfectly.

True story: in 2004, we got there early (as Amy notes: it’s a prerequisite) and found good seats in the hall. A gal sitting next to me was fascinated by it all and said to me, in a rather heavy accent from I-don’t-know-where: “Excuse me, what is this?” I looked at her and blinked. “This is the papal audience. The pope is about to come out.” Her mouth formed a little “Oh!” and she said, “I was passing by and saw the crowd and just followed everyone in.”

I was a bit amazed at that. Then after gazing around the huge hall at all the buzzing about, she asked, “Does this happen often?”

“Every Wednesday,” I replied.

Again with a little “Oh” and a nod of her head. She admitted that she was just visiting friends in Italy — for some reason, now, I recall that she was from Israel, and that she was Jewish — and she just found the whole papal thing quite entertaining.

Later, after the pontiff had been wheeled in, and people were chanting and singing and playing oom-pah music, she beamed and said to me, “It’s like a soccer game!”

Indeed.