Day Leave In Rome

IL PAPA - It was pure coincidence that revolving day leave brought me to Rome at the time Pope Pius XII gave his second mass audience to Allied troops. The first, when General Alexander had attended, had been a few weeks earlier.

We reached the city early and decided to start the day with breakfast at the NAAFI (Navy, Army, Air Force Institute,)on Via Venti Settembre where we heard that the Pope was granting a mass audience to Allied troops at the Vatican at 11 that morning. We scuttled across town and by 11 am we were gathered in the old audience chamber near the Sistine Chapel.

It was quiet and cool as the hall quickly filled behind the railing that separated us from the Papal throne. There was an ambience all about us, an air of reverence, almost of awe, which the clatter of army boots on the tiles could not dispel. I felt no sense of being out of place or alien in any way.

Then we heard shuffling as the slipper-shod carriers bore the Pope into the hall on the Gestoria Sedia. I had done some homework when I first heard that I was to have a day's leave in Rome, but never in my wildest dreams did I imagine that I would see the pagan sedan chair adopted by Christianity (together with the eating of the wafer and the Sunday worship) from the Mithraic state worship of Rome at the time of the Emperor Constantine.

As he was borne along, the Pope blessed us (in seven languages, I was afterwards told) before he took his seat on the throne, and formally blessed us all, in Latin. By this time, the ushers had removed some of the railing, and we were lined up to pass the Pope individually.