Rome Part 3: Our Date with the Pope

On our last day in Rome we had the celebration that brought this whole trip about, our date with the Pope, or the Canonization of Mother Marianne Cope!

That morning she was just a normal nun, but that afternoon? Girl was a Saint. 
Pretty awesome if you ask me!
If you have absolutely no idea what this is or why we were there for this, I wrote about it here.

Even though we had tickets through The Cause, we still had no idea how the seating arrangements were, so we got to St. Peter's Square bright and early at 6:15 am and waited outside the square with about 20 thousand of our closest friends. And those were just the one's who arrived early...

By this point we were all freaking out that we would be stuck standing in the back of the square and not see anything! But we worried for nothing, as our tickets got us right in front.  It was beyond insane seeing this kind of ceremony so close.  Absolutely a once in a lifetime event (well twice, but that's not the point).

Most of the ceremony was in Italian, Latin, and German, but the sections talking about Marianne were in English.  I can't tell you how cool it was to hear THE POPE say "Syracuse, New York!"
It sounded absolutely adorable in his holy accent. :)
The ceremony was about 3 hours and I can tell you honestly I have no idea what was going on. But, new Saints were made, we heard blessings from the Pope and other cardinals, and all took communion together.

 Officially obsessed with the Pope Mobile.
 He rode it around the square twice waving at everyone. He was just too cute!
I know you probably shouldn't say that about the Pope...but I mean it with my heart, so I think God is okay with it.

{The local news did a special on the first miracle, so if you want details or want to see my dad's TV debut, you can see it here! There just might be a scary photo of my dad with Kate from the 90s...Oh the hair...}

So, with a Papal blessing, we finished our Italian Getaway!

Random funny story from that day- while waiting in line before entering the square, a little boy standing next to me became mesmerized by my dress and started tracing the squiggles with his finger! It was so light I didn't notice at first, but then it started tickling so much. His mother was mortified but I thought it was the cutest thing! :)