Anxiety, excitement, tears on papal plane

In this photo taken Monday, Jan. 12, 2015 and made available Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015 Pope Francis, left, speaks to reporters en-route to Colombo, Sri Lanka, as he commence his Asian tour. The pontiff arrived in Sri Lanka Tuesday at the start of a weeklong Asian tour saying the island nation can’t fully heal from a quarter-century of ethnic civil war without pursuing truth for the injustices committed. (AP Photo/L’Osservatore Romano, pool)

“Buon viaggio!”

“Have a nice trip!” The greeting was delivered in his trademark soft but warm voice that despite the microphone, was barely audible because of the drone of the Airbus A330 engine and the nervous beating heart of many of the journalists joining the papal flight for the first time.

Adding to the anxiety of journalists was the rather hectic itinerary. Pope Francis’ second Asian trip was after all the most extensive yet of his barely two-year-old papacy.

Veteran Vatican media men said the itinerary was nothing compared with that of Pope John Paul II. In 1995, Saint John Paul II went not only to Asian not only to attend the World Youth Day in Manila but to do an apostolic visit as well of Sri Lanka. He was apparently following the example of Pope, now Blessed, Paul VI, who had visited both countries in 1970.

It was perhaps because of the anxiety of covering the “Pilgrim Pope and his rather demanding itinerary that journalists reacted with nervous laughter to Pope Francis wry remark, “There’s a lot of work,” he said.

He then went around and greeted the journalists one by one.

We had been briefed about how Pope Francis would start each apostolic tour with media men in tow the papal plane by walking to each seat to greet each journalist. It’s an effective way of putting journalist’s in their place while preventing pandemonium on the papal plane. Strapped to their seats, journalists would be prevented from mobbing the pope. If all else failed, there would be the burly stewardesses guarding His Holiness.

But the pressure would also be on the pontiff too since depending on the importance of the apostolic tour, media applications may rise or fall. Only the second time he would be in Asia – and the first time he would be in the Philippines, which delivered the biggest gathering in humanity via the 1995 World Youth Day Mass with John Paul the Great, according to Guinness Book of World Records – there has obviously been intense eagerness for Pope Francis coming again to Asia

In fact, a total of 72 media men from all over the world were accredited to the papal flight. These did not include members of the press who went directly to Manila to await the papal arrival and do advancers in the meantime.

Of the 72, Fr. Federico Lombardi, SJ, the head of the Holy See Press Office, made special mention of the Philippine journalists. Aside from this writer, they included Nino Manalo and Ana Patricia Hontiveros Pagkalinawan, 9TV; Lynda Jumilla Abalos and Ariel Fulgado, ABS-CBN News; Kara Patria David and Melchor Quintos, GMA Network; Arvin Rillera and Jhemmylrut Torres, TV5 Network Inc.; Marco Paolo Bombase and Wilfred Delgado Herrera, Radio-TV Malacanang; Cicero Roy Lagarde, CBCP News; and Jose Adrias Torres, UCAN News.

“Something unique,” Father Lombardi told the Pope, “this time we have with us a good 14 Filipinos. This says something about the expectations from that country.”

Yes, you will be mobbed by millions, I overheard my seat mate said. He was a cameraman from French Catholic TV and he told me his bosses sent him “because of the Philippines, millions will mob the Pope.”

Adding to our anxiety was the late notice from two French journalists that they were backing out because they had to cover the terrorist attacks in Paris.

Father Lombardi told the Pope that the two newspapers were Le Figaro and Le Monde, newspapers not exactly friendly to the Church but which had been sending its correspondents to Rome and papal tours because of the significant role that the Church plays in global affairs.

The security situation was in the mind of everyone so that this writer had earlier asked Father Lombardi if the Pope had gone to St Mary Major Basilica to pray to the Madonna since there were no reports from the Holy See Press Office. It is a practice he has observed since becoming pope.

The Pope did, he told me. He went Saturday evening when no one was there and he stayed for 20 minutes.

“Don’t worry,” Lombardi told me. “The Pope prayed to the Madonna for a safe trip, he always does that.”

But of course, we were just as nervous about being greeted by the Pope.

It is typical of papal encounters for the devotee to be dumbstruck and frozen, so this writer rehearsed a short greeting, the simpler the better. “Your Holiness,” I greeted him, “I am from the Philippines and we are greatly honored by your visit.”

And he nodded, and as a gesture to show how as a Catholic I recognized his spiritual paternity, nay his magisterial or teaching authority (and to pompously burnish my Catholic credentials), I took his hand and kissed it, looking for his papal ring. There was none.

It was only then I realized that I had kissed the Pope’s bare hand. I was on the right side of the plane and the Pope’s nearest hand was his right. His bishop’s ring was on his left.

The hand was fleshly white, with a hint of sallow but sunny grandeur in it, the feel of Raphael’s Renaissance Madonna, except that this was a man’s hand, tender but firm.

I didn’t gargle after that. Almost. My lips had kissed the hand of the Vicar of Christ. My lips had suddenly been a reliquary.

But others as well were able to procure their own “relics.”

Pia Hontiveros asked her rosaries be blessed, and the Pope obliged, putting his hand on the sacramental items and taking the time to say e traditional formula of blessing. TV 5’s Torres gave him a letter from a kid with a degenerative disease and the Pope accepted it, nodding his head to assure he would read it. And RTVM’s Bombase asked the Pope to bless his family. The Pope placed his hand on the TV broadcast man’s face and intoned the blessing.

When the Pope continued his rounds to greet other journalists from other countries, all faces of Philippine journalists were visibly red. Many. The faces, including the males’, were in tears. Everyone was touched by the Spirit.