March 24
We celebrated Palm Sunday with Pope Francis. In the pictures you can see me (Daniel Bitman), Felipe Raed and a few guys from the US waiting at St Peter’s square for the mass to start. In the afternoon we went to visit the imperial forum and Fr. John Wauck explain to us a few things on Christian Rome and its great monuments. Fr. John teaches at Pontifical University of the Holy Cross.
March 25
Every single corner in Rome is amazing, see this picture:
In the afternoon we visited Scavi Vaticani, that is the cemetery underneath St. Peter’s Basilica where they found St. Peter’s tomb with the inscription “PETRUS EVÝ” which means in Greek “Peter lies here”.
See in the picture a moment of the visit:
March 26
In the morning we went to the UNIV FORUM at Pontifical University of the Holy Cross. In the afternoon we had a very interesting conference with William B. Hurlbut, a physician and Consulting Professor at the Neuroscience Institute in Stanford.
March 27
Today we went to Cavabianca to attend the get together with the Father.
March 28, Holy Thursday
Today we attended the Holy Week services at Santa Maria in Ara Coeli where we enjoyed the amazing choir directed by Max Lozano.
March 29, Good Friday
One of the things we did today was to go up the Scala Santa, where we could venerate the biggest relics of the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The Scala Santa is a wooden staircase that covers the remains of the try staircase the Lord walked up when he was presented to the people by Pilate with the words “Behold the man!”
March 30, Holy Saturday
Today we were lucky to attend Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica with Pope Francis. In the picture you can see our group waiting for the ceremony to start.
After Easter Vigil we gathered at St Peter’s square to go back to the hotel to keep celebrating the resurrection of the Lord.
March 31, Easter Sunday.
Big celebration in the evening at a great restaurant close to Agrippa pantheon in downtown Rome. All of us were thinking the same: I want to be back here next year, and yes, I threw the coin to Fontana Di Trevi, so yeah, I’ll be back in Rome soon!
*By Daniel Bittman McIntyre
