I was torn about putting this post up because it seemed so miserably self-referential, as if it actually matters where we were when the Pope died. But thinking about it a bit more, I decided it’s actually not so lame. I think it will be interesting to read your accounts of where you were, what you were doing, how people around you reacted to John Paul’s passing. We’re all about faith and its impact here, and this is another corner of it to explore.

We were on our way to Arizona – and the thing I remember is this.  There are times when I travel that there’s some big sporting event going on – baseball playoffs, basketball tournaments, and so on – and as you walk through the airport, you see people just sort of standing around in the walkways, outside the airport bars and restaurants, watching the televisions to catch the score. That’s what this was like, except what people were doing was stopping at the televisions to see what the Pope’s condition was. That Thursday night before, I had been in New York, and the sign of the times was the television crews setting up for their vigils in front of St. Patrick’s Cathedral.

The Sunday after he died, we went to Mass at San Xavier del Bac, described here, and the church had several pictures of John Paul around, he was mentioned in the prayers of course, but not in the homily, which I described here. It was rather striking to be down there in Arizona, in (in US terms) an ancient church, worshipping, not only with tourists, but with a substantial number of parishioners, whose ancestors were probably evangelized by Spanish missionaries and the redoubtable Father Kino, and here we were, in this gorgeous, vibrant church, in the Real Presence of Jesus, united in Him and united, through his sufferings with all the sufferings in the world, (the "wounds" in that Sunday’s readings) so vividly lived by John Paul, and all hoping in the eternal life , as our ancient and sturdy faith assured us, would be his and ours as well.

In case you want to go back in time, here are a few threads that might interest you:

The What Did You Hear from that weekend – 102 comments long – focusing on how the death of John Paul II was dealt with in your parishes

That morning before the Pope died, I went to Mass at St. Patrick’s and heard Cardinal Egan preach – a brief account.

Actually, you might want to just go to the April archive and scroll down and through. Not for my thoughts, which are not fascinating, but for the various and numerous threads we ran – on covering the coverage, on our thoughts during the Pope’s funeral, and then, scroll back up for the Whoo-Hoo! Ratzinger! Thread