{"id":195,"date":"2007-09-19T14:06:59","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T14:06:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/for-a-cause.html"},"modified":"2007-09-19T14:06:59","modified_gmt":"2007-09-19T14:06:59","slug":"for-a-cause","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/for-a-cause.html","title":{"rendered":"For a cause"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today, at the GA, a Venetian gondolier met with the Pope – but it’s more than just a photo op:<\/a><\/p>\n

The 143-mile pilgrimage by water, sponsored by the Patriarchate of Venice and the M. Baschirotto foundation, was undertaken to raise awareness and support for research on rare diseases, with the specific aim of helping children in Togo.
\nA small group of patients and their relatives accompanied the gondolier to the public audience Wednesday and received the pope’s blessing.
\nOrio, who is 66, rowed from Venice along the Adriatic coast to Ancona, where the gondola continued its voyage by truck. It was put back in the water near Rome, where it traveled down the Tiber. Too big to be brought into the Vatican, the huge black row boat with its trademark gilded decorations, was left on the outskirts of St. Peter’s Square for the audience.
\nOrio is not new to such feats. Now retired, he devotes his time to using his skills for charitable causes. Several years ago, he rowed across the English Channel.
\nBut the mustachioed gondolier, who was accompanied to the Vatican by Venice Patriarch Cardinal Angelo Scola, lost some of his brio when he met face to face with Benedict.
\n“I was overwhelmed with emotion,” Orio said, admitting that in the excitement he kissed both the pope’s hands instead of just kissing the pope’s ring, as Vatican protocol suggests.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Incidentally, many more nice shots of the GA – better than the news feed at Yahoo – here at Catholic Press Photo. <\/a>
\nOf course, if you want lots and lots<\/em> of photos, go to the Vatican’s own site<\/a> – but it is kind of a chore to get through and the full-size photos have\u00a0 a watermark, understandably, right across the middle.
\nMore on the journey at the (yes) Gondola Blog.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today, at the GA, a Venetian gondolier met with the Pope – but it’s more than just a photo op: The 143-mile pilgrimage by water, sponsored by the Patriarchate of Venice and the M. Baschirotto foundation, was undertaken to raise awareness and support for research on rare diseases, with the specific aim of helping children…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pope"],"yoast_head":"\nFor a cause - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/09\/for-a-cause.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"For a cause - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today, at the GA, a Venetian gondolier met with the Pope – but it’s more than just a photo op: The 143-mile pilgrimage by water, sponsored by the Patriarchate of Venice and the M. 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The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}