Bruce Caslow says I was “running for pope”, and I really was! There was only one voter, but I was hoping He would work some great miracle and elevate me to that high office. As I was walking back to the Vatican from Roma Termini, I was crying, and crying out to God, saying that even if He did, I would have no idea what to do with it. I soon realized that was not true. I knew I’d need to be guided by prayer every step of the way.
I hadn’t really considered the Papacy for years, even through the months of Pope Francis’ illness. As soon as he died, however, I immediately thought of going to Rome. What if God would now make me Pope? I was smoking a marijuana joint. Maybe it was just my drug-fueled imagination. Sure would be nice to take mom for a ride around St. Peter’s Square in the Popemobile for Mother’s Day. Still, what if it was from God?
After a few days, I realized that not going was unthinkable. That would lead to another bout of suicidal depression, for sure. Go to Rome, do it right this time, see if God works a miracle. If not, just make it a pilgrimage to Rome.
The last pilgrimage didn’t go so well. Two years ago, I was asked on the train ride into Rome if I was an actor, because of the way I was dressed, and by the end of that week I concluded that I was. All those poor people in Rome, and I made sure I had a youth hostel or a room in a religious house every night. My last full day in Rome, I took off the white robe and didn’t put it back on for two years. I was ashamed of my conduct, and ashamed to wear the white robe.
The day of the Pope Francis’s funeral, Our Daily Bread Ministries, whose devotional I read regularly, choose the first book of Joshua for the reading. In it, God commands Joshua three times, “be brave and courageous”, “be brave and very courageous”, “only be brave and very courageous”.
On April 28th, my income tax refund appear in my bank account on the same day that the opening date of the conclave was announced. Was it coincidence? A sign? There was no question at that point but that I was going. I checked tickets in the morning, waited until I had lunch with Bruce before buying a round trip with a return flight two weeks later, then chastised myself for not being braver and more courageous by buying the ticket in the morning. It would have saved me $150.
My flight left Dulles at 5:10 pm on April 7, connected through Dublin at 6 am the next morning, and landed in Rome at 11 am, where I ate an hamburger at Eataly for breakfast, then found a chaotic scene at the airport train station due to a train worker’s strike. Another half hour to find the airport bus terminal, then long lines and a forty minute wait for a bus to the Vatican. At least I got in a morning flight! I took the bus, walked the remaining blocks to St. Peter’s Square, went through the security check (metal detectors and X-ray machines), and entered the Basilica.
There are confessionals at St. Peter’s in several languages, but at the time only Italian was available. I waited for about an hour, until two English speaking priests turned on their green lights. I had tried the door of the first confessional because the light was green and not red, but the door was locked, so I waited. Somebody else made the same mistake, which brought the priest out with an angry rebuke that we should all wait in line. I explained to him that the red light was not lit, and he snapped back at me that the light was not working and I should pay attention to who else was waiting. I went to the other confessional..
I confessed as well as a Protestant can. I advised the priest right away that I was Protestant, and he advised me right away that he could not administer the sacrament, but we could still speak. The sin I confessed had been heavy on my heart for some days. Years ago, after the collapse of Occupy, I had prayed for Pope Benedict to die so that I could become pope. I had the sense that the prayer would be answered, and Pope Benedict resigned within the month! Yet I felt that I had failed as a prophet, since I had “discerned” that the pope would die, when in fact he resigned. I didn’t even consider going to Rome for the conclave that elected Pope Francis.
Now I see what an outrageous, inconsiderate, arrogant prayer that really was. What a jerk. All it showed, really, was how unqualified I was to be pope. If God ever sees fit to award me the papacy, I hope my opponents will be kinder than I was, and pray only for my resignation, not my death. I had nothing against the man except that he was in my way! I was determined to confess that sin before Mass that day, which I did. There’s a saying in A.A. that you’re only as sick as your secrets, and that’s one I’m ashamed to air out, but there it is.
The priest didn’t even assign me a Hail Mary. Instead, he asked me “Why not become Catholic?”
Why not? Well, I don’t really accept all of the dogma, and you don’t believe in the theology, well, then, how can you be Catholic? Especially when so much is made of the differences.
I attended the 5 pm Mass, without actually taking communion, since Protestants are not welcome to receive the Eucharist in Roman Catholic churches. I would have liked to walk up to the dome of St. Peter’s, one of my favorite places, but it was late (the dome might have already closed), so I decided to walk to the train station and give all my money away just as planned, just as St. Francis of Assisi would have done. This was a bit more stressful than I had figured, since after a two hour walk to Roma Termini (the train station), I found that I couldn’t use the WiFi there without a working phone number, so I couldn’t check my bank balance, or use Google Maps to find an ATM machine. I finally found a bank ATM machine, took out a hundred euros, and handed out five twenty euro notes to various beggars there at the station. I walked back to the Vatican, crying to God and crying to St. Francis. Just trying to be a good Franciscan. I hoped he would approve. I suspect that he did, but I think he would advice me to be a little more discerning. I ended up back near St. Peter’s, at the passenger underpass at the Piazza del Sant’uffizio, where I remembered that homeless people sleep. Sure enough, there were homeless there, and in my broken Italian, I asked if I could sleep there, and I they said that I could, so I took off my robe, used it as a blanket, and laid down on the concrete to try and get some sleep.
I didn’t sleep very well, due to the cold and the snoring of the other people sleeping there. The jet lag certainly didn’t help. The next morning I walked the short distance back to St. Peter’s, planning to attend the 9 am Mass at the Alter of the Cathedra in the back of the church, but that Mass was cancelled because it was the first day of the conclave. So instead, I attended the big 10 am Mass at the Papal Alter with a couple thousand other people. Watched all of the cardinals process past a sea of cell phones lifted in the air and could even follow along because we all got the Order of the Mass in both English and Italian:
After church, I made my first visit to the Elemosineria Apostolica, the papal almoner’s office. A. and P. had told me that the Elemosineria gives out tents and sleeping bags to the homeless. I had no intention of lugging a tent around, nor any place to store it, but after that first night’s cold sleep, I did request a sleeping bag, which I received.
I spent the rest of the afternoon sitting by the Colonnades in St. Peter’s square, fasting and praying for the cardinals. I left around 6 pm, since I didn’t expect an election that first evening anyway.
Did I mention A. and P.? At some point the previous evening, I had met two Estonians camped out a block from the Vatican. A. was flying a cardboard sign that read “Message from God: Give me throne or I will make the world suffer.” While I didn’t completely agree with it (I think we make ourselves suffer, and God just allows it), none of the beggars at the train station had any such message, but I had already given all of my money away. Then I started thinking that maybe I should have given the money to the poor around the Vatican, instead of going to Roma Termini. Then I remembered that my mother was saving $50 for me, so that second evening I called Bruce from the McDonald’s WiFi, asked him to send me the fifty dollars, and gladly withdrew 40 euros and gave twenty each to A. and P.
The next day I did attend the smaller 9 am Mass, and spent the rest of the day sitting in St. Peter’s Square, fasting and praying for the cardinals. My prayer was not for myself, but rather that God would guide the cardinals to select whomever He would have them select. Wearing a white robe and a wooden cross, I attracted a small bit of attention, and was photographed and interviewed by several members of the media. At one point, I was asked point blank by an Italian journalist if I had any preference for pope and I told a little white lie. I said that I had no preference for pope (untrue) and was hoping for a good Franciscan (maybe myself?)
I saw the black smoke at noon and then, around 6 pm, the smoke was white! A new pope had been elected!
I felt no bitterness or depression. I had come, confessed, fasted and prayed. There was nothing else I can see that I could have done, it was out of my hands, and the Lord saw fit to award the papacy to Pope Leo. Let’s all pray for him to be strengthened and filled with the Holy Spirit. Let him be brave and very courageous, as well!
Everyone now began crowding into St. Peter’s Square, joining those of us who were already there as the police opened even more security gates to accommodate those who came running. The Swiss Guard paraded in with a marching band and lined up at attention before the facade of the Basilica. They stood at attention for probably half and hour, and then the cardinal protodeacon announced Robert Francis Prevost as Pope Leo XIV, and the papal standard was soon displayed. Pope Leo addressed the crowd, most of which was incomprehensible to me, but I caught something about romani e pellegrini . After the ceremony was finished, I filtered out of the square along with the thousands of other people, probably visited A. and P., picked up some discarded cardboard from dumpsters on the Via dei Penitenzieri, as I had been advised by one the other men sleeping in the underpass, and returned there to rest for the night.
The next morning, I was walking through St. Peter’s Square, who did I see but the “pope” posing for selfies, and I just had to get one!
Somewhat surprisingly, he didn’t speak English.
I spent the next hour and a half walking around the perimeter of the Vatican until I found an Italian non-profit I been told about, WeCare. Here they offered some nice services for the homeless, coffee and crackers for breakfast, an ample lunch, and the chance to charge my cellphone, which by now was completely dead.
That evening, I met a doctor who worked at L’Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia, the oldest hospital in Europe, which is only a short walk from the Vatican. He explained to me that in medieval times, unwanted infants were often thrown into the Tiber, where their tiny corpses would periodically wash ashore. The hospital established a policy of accepting unwanted infants anonymously, and built a rotating compartment where they could be deposited. Here he is, posing next to the “baby hatch”:
I don’t remember his name. I noted it on my smartphone at the time, but the phone was later stolen.
WeCare was closed on the weekends, so Saturday I went somewhere I had been told about: Il Dono di Maria, the soup kitchen run by the Missionaries of Charity, the religious order founded by Mother Theresa, where the nuns wear the same white saris with three blue stripes! Their evening meal is for men only, and is served in a dining room that seats about 75 people. Tickets are handed out at 4:30 pm and when they are gone, they are gone. The meal is served at 5:15 pm and begins with a few minutes of prayer in Italian. Bread and water are put out on all of the tables, and there are two courses served. The first is usually pasta, with sauce but no cheese. The second is often a cheap meat, such as frozen chicken patties accompanied by some vegetables. Occasionally, a cup of coffee and a small desert and served, but I only experienced that once.
Either Saturday or Sunday of that first weekend, I was lying on the ground on a grassy patch of the Piazza del Risorgimento, and I looked up to see the Man in Black walking directly towards me! A young man I had never seen before, dressed in a black religious habit, lightly bearded, and wearing a silver cross on a chain around his neck, walked up to me without hardly saying a word, pressed a small, plastic-wrapped pizza and a rosary in my startled hands, kissed my hands, then walked away.
By now, I had experienced several days of the meals at WeCare and Il Dono di Maria, and while I was grateful to have something to eat, I was already coming to accept that I had gone all the way to Rome and probably would never eat a pizza there. It was delicious! Just bread and sauce, no cheese, no toppings, but a real, authentic Italian pizza! I wondered briefly if I had been fed by an angel.
Since the conclave was concluded, I decided to hitchhike to Assisi, the hometown of St. Francis of Assisi, and visit the Franciscan sites there – San Damiano, where Francis experienced his famous vision, and Portiuncula, the ruined chapel where Francis established a camp that would become the first home of the Franciscan Order. I had visited Assisi with my parents when I was 14, but it made no impression on me because at that time I knew nothing of St. Francis.
Monday morning, I went to WeCare for coffee and a shower, stayed for lunch, then set out hiking to the north of the city in search of a good hitchhiking spot. I finally stumbled upon the bike trail that runs along the right bank of the Tiber all the way to the Raccordo, Rome’s beltway.
It took me until late afternoon to reach the Raccordo. Once there, I hiked to the next interchange north on the SS3 road and found a decent spot to wait for rides. It was a curved on-ramp when the traffic had to slow down a bit for the curve, there was a place to pull over, and a fair number of cars were going by. I adopted what has become my standard hitchhiking practice since Alaska: stand by the side of the road and pray for rides. It worked very well when I felt led by the Spirit to travel from Anchorage to Fairbanks after three days of fasting and prayer. This day, however, it was not to be. I waiting about an hour, until nearly sunset, and saw many cars go by, but none stopped.
I walked back to the trail and along the way found a discarded plastic bag filled with various trash – a small crushed cake of some kind, perhaps half eaten, and a pear! An uneaten, perfectly formed pear! I threw the rest of the garbage in the refuse bin, washed off the pear in the nearest Roman water fountain, and that was my dinner!
The man who first gave me a white robe came out of religious revival in 1970s America. Sometimes known as “garbage eaters”, they developed a reputation for being cult-like and authoritarian. I’d witnessed the feuding between other members, but it still came as a shock when they threw me out for being gay.
Anyway, I’m still a garbage eater! Like the shrewd manager in the parable, I’m too proud to beg, plus I don’t like how it reflects on the white robe; I don’t want to appear self-serving. I ask God for my food and if nobody offers me any, I’ll just fast, and when an untouched piece of fruit or something of the kind appears in the garbage, I regard it as the answer to a prayer.
I had already identified a place to sleep for the night, along the trail, right near its end where there was an abandoned shelter off to one side. I got there just after dusk, and found I was not alone in identifying it as a choice spot for the poor. A number of squatters had settled into it, some cooking dinner. I decided to walk in amongst them and ask for a spot to put down my sleeping bag for the night. I was told that there was no place for me there, and that I should “ask the pope”!
I walked further back down the trail and found a quiet place off to the side to sleep for the night. It was cattle grazing land, there was no rain, and I was able to sleep as late as I wanted with nobody to bother me. I was back on the trail around 9 am, and made it to WeCare for lunch at noon.
Since I wasn’t going to Assisi, I set about finding something else useful to do. I googled for high schools, and found a public school nearby that looked interesting – the Liceo Scientifico Statale Talete. After lunch that Tuesday, I walked to the school and was soon talking to a teacher who was stepping out to smoke a cigarette (something very common in Italy). He suggested that I send an email to the principal asking to visit the school, which sounded like a fine idea. I resolved to do so the next morning, when I had WiFi access at WeCare.
Later that afternoon, somebody suggested to me that I ask for a spot in a dormitory run by the Vatican for the homeless, but I decided to return to San Piedro train station, where I had been sleeping for several nights because it was quieter than the underpass (no snoring). That’s also why I decided against the dormitory. I’d had bad luck with them in the United States, often being kept awake for hours by snoring. The train station seemed quiet and safe, and the police had told me that I was allowed to sleep there until 7 am. The next morning, though, my phone was stolen.
I woke up around 6 am and checked the time on the telephone before replacing it in the shoe next to my head, since I had until 7. I dozed off, and when I got up at 6:50, the phone was gone.
I struggled, and am still struggling, to forgive that thief. The phone was my only communication device, my map and my translator.
I was unable to email the principal of the high school. I returned to the school the next day, explained to the staff at the front door what had happened, and asked to make an appointment to see the principal. I could not! Email was the only way to obtain an appointment. There was no possibility of making an appointment in person, and no exception could be made because I had no access to email. No email; no visit.
For me, the worst part of living homeless isn’t the modest food or sleeping conditions. It is the sense of uselessness. Some of those students might have really enjoyed hearing something about my math research, or my history of calculus lecture. Between the thief and the unyielding school policies, that opportunity was lost.
I started spending my mornings at WeCare and my afternoons and evenings in the Piazza del Risorgimento, studying and reading Italian. I had brought an introductory Italian book with me, and had purchased an Italian New Testament and an Italian-English dictionary my first day in Rome, on my way from the bus to St. Peter’s. The Man in Black appeared once again, this time with a small gift from Burger King.
On Saturday, I found a small park that A. had told me about, and laid out my sleeping bag to take a nap. A short time later, A. appeared and gave me eight cookies, which turned out to be all I had to eat that day. WeCare was closed, and Il Dono di Maria was full. I witnessed a seagull kill a pigeon, carry the carcass to the top of a car, and devour it. I wasn’t that desperate to eat!
Sunday was Pope Leo’s installation. I went to a 9 am English language Mass that morning at the Chiesa di Santo Spirito in Sassia, next to the L’Ospedale di Santo Spirito in Sassia. The installation Mass then started at ten, with a huge crowd and a security operation to match. I spent over an hour skirting around the security, since I didn’t want to discard the cap of my water bottle as they required, and finally watched the end of the Mass from the Piazza del Risorgimento. Afterwards, I was walking around the area with one of the homeless men from WeCare, and he pointed out to me a pile of food bags for the poor and encouraged me to take one. It contained two sandwiches and two bottles of water, and that was my lunch! Later in day I was gifted some croissants for dinner.
I met the Man in Black again and this time got to know him better. He’s Canadian, and after a religious experience when he was nineteen, decided to travel to Egypt to join the Coptic monastery of St. Anthony. He was not allowed to stay, but continued his travels, finally ending up in Rome. I carried around a backpack and a sleeping bag, but the Man in Black just traveled with the clothes on his back. At one point, he had gone 48 days without a shower, celebrating Pope Francis’s exhortation that we should be pastors who smell like the sheep!
My flight back to the United States was on Tuesday morning at 11 am, so I decided to walk to the airport on Monday afternoon, anticipating a seven or eight hour walk. After returning the sleeping bag to the Elemosineria, I borrowed a tablet at WeCare and wrote out the walking directions to the airport given by Google Maps:
On Sunday I had gone to “confession” at the Chiesa di Santo Spirito in Sassia, meaning that I entered a confessional and knelt before the priest, even though I advised him that I was a Protestant, and I knew that I therefore could not receive the Sacrament of Reconciliation. I told him that I was struggling to forgive the thief who stole my phone, and he advised me to read Luke 6:27, which I did.
That lasted one day, until I was lost in the middle of my airport walk, asking people in my broken Italian if I could look at a map, wondering where the heck I was when I finally saw one, then backtracking ten minutes on a road with no sidewalk and no shoulder, calling out to God against that no-good m—– f—– that stole my phone. The f— word is in my vocabulary, I hate to admit it.
To me, the most disturbing aspect of the theft was that I felt so much hatred for the thief, while I hardly feel any animosity towards the murderer who shot and killed one of my best friends two years ago. Perhaps because John was living four thousand miles away and we talked once a month or so, while I missed the cell phone every time I wanted to look at a map, or read my email, or translate something into Italian, or talk to my mom. My mom – she’s the one now buying me another phone. I’d just put up with not having one for a while, but of course she wants to be able to call her son…
I walked about three or four hours Monday afternoon, about halfway to the airport, and had just crossed the Raccordo when I met a woman who talked to me for a few minutes in Spanish and then pulled two tickets out her purse and pressed them into my hand, telling me to take the bus and the train to get to the airport, which I did.
That evening, I hid my backpack under a bench and followed the bike trail from the end of the airport bus terminal into the town of Fiumicino, where I walked to the end of the jetty, gazed out over the Mediterranean Sea, then walked back to the airport. Along the way was a strip of restaurants doing a brisk business. Since I had not eaten since lunchtime, I was hoping that perhaps I could ask a waiter for a basket of bread that was about to be discarded, but no such opportunity presented itself. I resolved anew not to treat people the way the majority does.
My flight departed Rome at 11 am, and though I had nothing but a passport (no booking code, no boarding pass), I was able to catch the plane with no problem. I had found out on my way over that Aer Lingus jetliners are named after Irish saints, and this time I took note of them: I flew from Rome to Dublin on St. Kilian, and from Dublin to Dulles on St. Finbarr. There was no meal service on the European leg, but on the transcontinental flight I was not only fed, but the stewardess gave me a second meal. I had been wondering what airlines did with their leftover food, and I now read on the Internet that it’s mostly discarded, so I’m glad I asked. Once we arrived at Dulles, I walked out to the curb hoping to meet Bruce, but didn’t see him. My bizarre dress saved the day, as a stranger told me that my friend was waiting for me at the baggage claim! On the way home, we stopped at the supermarket for milk and juice, and I was home in bed by 9 pm, Washington time.
Now I’m very pleasantly jet lagged the fun way, and have been up by 6 am every morning for the last week. It almost makes the jet lag hell from three weeks ago worth it! The early morning starts, the convenience of a house to live in and a laptop to work on, plus the boredom of two weeks with no work, combine to produce some nice motivation. Write this blog post. Get the keyboard working. Finish Aaron Walker. Finish Modern Integration.
Honestly, if I had been elected pope, it would have ripped the church apart. The Roman Catholics would never accept a Protestant pope; it’s explicitly forbidden by canon law. The masses of people will never change. You have to work for money; it’s just the way the world is. Nor will they accept religious rule; they have their republics and they’re not going back to a papal state. So the throne of St. Peter becomes another symbolic role, with little real power.
Some people anticipate the Final Persecution. Others look around and say, what persecution? We don’t see too much persecution, at least in the West, and we don’t see any Final Persecution. That’s because our churches have watered down the Gospel to make it populist. You can be a Missionary of Charity, but you can also run a restaurant and refuse to serve people who can’t pay. We expect to be gifted eternal life for free, but we can’t give someone a hamburger for free. If we can’t give out hamburgers for free, and instead we’re compelled to work jobs where everything is monetized, well, then there’s your persecution.
What would I do if I were pope?
The first thing I’d do is end the Protestant schism.
Next, I’d orchestrate a political campaign to bring back Lazio (and Rome) as a papal state. I’d insist that we really try to live like Christians, that all of our basic services be free, and that we fund that agenda not by taxing the rich, but by being willing to live in poverty ourselves. We’d have no taxation; either people would fund the government through voluntary contributions, or the project would fail. We’d be open to immigration, both because of Christ’s commandment to love each other, and because we’ll need a lot of help!
A leading role needs to be assumed by Franciscans, by the Franciscan Order, and by the Franciscan ideal. Something I learned, and am learning, from my pilgrimage, is the importance of poverty. It’s a bit heartbreaking to answer someone’s sincere request for help with “I’m sorry, I don’t have any money,” but it’s a lot easier when it’s the truth! Any quantity of money has the potential to disrupt our inter-personal relationships, but so do a lot of other things. Our Benedictine friends are right when they preach about wise management of resources, but we must reject a society that does almost nothing for anybody who doesn’t have money.
The biggest single problem faced by immigrants is the language barrier. Learning a new language is a task of about the same difficulty as earning a college degree, and it’s unrealistic to broadly expect that from all immigrants. Plus, what should they do during the years it will take for them to achieve fluency? Fortunately, A.I. technology offers a path forward. Products like Google Translate show that we’re on the verge of developing the “universal translator” of Star Trek lore, and translation earbuds are already on the market. Of course, I’d like to see open technology rather than proprietary systems.
Are there minable geothermal resources in Lazio? The region’s wikipedia page says that there might be. I hope so, because we need energy independence. Political independence has limited effect without economic independence, and energy independence is a critical facet of that. Baring a major technological breakthrough (like cold fusion), we’d like to produce all of Rome’s energy from local geothermal sources.
My vision of Rome is a city of the future, a city of autonomous cars, flying drones, and robots, not because we’re trying to sell ourselves as futuristic, but because we need to move forward. We need autonomous cars because of the million people annually that die in automobile accidents. We need flying drones to relieve ground congestion. We need robots to do the work that people don’t want to do, instead of coercing people into the service of money to work those jobs.
But, like I said, electing any Protestant pope at this point would be disastrous. Clearly, I’m not the best choice. The Protestant schism can only be ended by a Catholic pope. Maybe Pope Leo is that man! Rather than hanging my head in despair, perhaps I can trust that my prayer was heard and answered, and that Pope Leo is God’s man for the job. God knows now, but we’ll only find out in time. Let’s all pray for the pope to exercise wise and Godly leadership over the whole church. I’d also suggest he be brave and very courageous.
Meanwhile, I dress like a nut, I can’t hold down a job, I either live off of other people or live homeless. The greatest opportunity God gave me, I blew it. I told a bald-faced lie to a journalist in St. Peter’s Square during the conclave! I didn’t say “no comment”; I lied. Who cares, it’s just a little white lie? But what does God think? In the middle of the conclave? I’m asked who I’d prefer to be pope and I lied? It isn’t a very good look.
I will say this in my defense – I did resolve to apologize to her if I were elected.
The Man in Black is a better Franciscan than I. While I lugged a backpack with a sleeping bag tied to it everywhere I went, he traveled much lighter. I gave out cash that most probably got spent on alcohol and drugs by random homeless people, while he targeted his giving and gave in food, not cash.
Still, this was a really good pilgrimage for me. I acted like a pilgrim and not a tourist. I was sometimes cold, sometimes hungry. I napped in the park on the piazza because I didn’t have a room to go back to, and I couldn’t buy a bagel when I was hungry because I had given my money away. I learned that I can think that I’m lead by God to some destiny, but it isn’t real. Or maybe it is, but not in the way that I expected. I’m wearing the white robe again, doing the best that I can. I didn’t get what I wanted, so I’m just going to keep trying.