Ingram's December 2022

B E T W E E N T H E L I N E S

had anything to do with those park- ing spaces. What followed were three days of shooting one glorious mass after

out in about six directions. In this primitive age before GPS, I leaned out my window towards a motorcyclist close enough I could smell his lunch and asked him the one Italian phrase I taught myself, “Per andare a San Pietro.” I could not begin to understand his answer, but like a good Italian, he used his hands a lot, and I followed where he was pointing. I repeated this ritual at two subse quent circles, and just as I was about to give up hope, there loomed above me like a rogue planet, the magnifi cent dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. I sped towards it. At the Vatican, again right out of Fel l ini, a dwar f beckoned me to a small parking lot he was tend- ing. There was one spot open. I paid him and raced on foot toward my meeting with the crew, wondering all the way whether the dwarf really

Josef Ratzinger, and I interviewed him one-on-one in my half-assed French. Fast forward to April 2005. I was in Paris for an aviation conference and stopped by Notre Dame Cathedral. I wasn’t there 30 seconds when a large screen set up for the purpose switched from a French talking head to the balcony of the Vatican, where they announced, “We have a new Pope, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger.” “I know that guy,” I shouted impul sively—well, I kind of did. I found myself reminiscing about this adventure during a Latin mass on Nov. 1, 2022, and realized that the date was the 25th anniversary of my return from the desert. God does work in strange and mysterious ways.

Extended work on the project exposed the

another in one cathedral more splen did than the next. At one stop, Fr. DeMentque, whom we had taken to calling Cecil B. DeMentque, shang haied a prominent cardinal named Latin mass to a number of folks who saw it as a moving, sacred ceremony. Why would the Church abandon it?

The views expressed in this column, which is also published online in the Heartlander, are the writer’s own, and do not necessarily reflect those of Ingram’s Magazine. Jack Cashill , Senior Editor, Editorial @ Ingrams.com

10

I n g r a m ’ s

December 2022

Ingrams.com