Il Papa, don't preach ...

[blamebrampton]

I survived World Youth Day* Super Thursday!

Though I was nearly knocked to the ground by a nun running for her train. Never get between a nun and an open train door. She was travelling en masse with her fellow sisters, and one of them stopped to check I was all right. It's as I've always known, there are nice nuns and evil nuns!

Once on my connecting train, I took a calming breath. Which lasted until the next station when some hundred pilgrims from the US and Central America barrelled into my carriage. And their leader proceeded to shout the rosary over his megaphone. I'm all for freedom of religion, but not at earsplitting volume. The non-pilgrims were politely silent but gave pained looks, and one of the teenaged pilgrims muttered to the leader, who turned his volume right down to bearable before he repeated the rosary in Spanish. Bless that teenaged pilgrim!

I had a lovely brief chat with a nice pilgrim from New Jersey who had been on planes for some 24 hours before arriving in Sydney this morning. She was looking forward to a shower and some sleep, and then some native wildlife. I told her how to find possums and fruit bats, and not to be afraid of the latter. She seemed to think that praying on public transport was quite normal. Perhaps it is in New Jersey. In Sydney and London we have traditionally prayed for public transport, but that's not quite the same.

In Bishop Fisher news, some of his colleagues have defended him and called him a lovely man. Here's a tip: we godless heathens will be more likely to spot your loveliness if you don't sneer at the families of abuse victims.

ETA: The Pope officially had  Boatacade today. Is it wrong that I can only call it Pope on a Boat?

*Total misnomer, it's at least a week.

Comments

[pingrid.livejournal.com]

Very pleased to hear you have not yet succumbed to pilgrim-related death! From your descriptions I'm a little impressed that no pilgrims have had to suffer a Brammers-related death either.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I did kick a nun once, but she hit me first and I was eight. I am a much calmer person these days.

Shouty man might have been in for a word, except for the embarrassed muttered responses from his flock, which grew quieter and more embarrassed with every Hail Mary, thus guaranteeing my sympathy. Poor kids!

[pingrid.livejournal.com]

Shouty man would have infuriated me beyond reason, and the cynic in me would not have any sympathy for kids who had brought it on themselves by going with him in the first place. It is good for everyone that I'm not currently in Sydney. :)

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

Most of them had been on planes for over twenty hours, their spirits were crushed.

I have to say that everyone is being Terribly Polite, it's like being in New Zealand, or Kent.

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

I believe I"m still being held responsible for a nun going into a psychiatric facility. Then again, she did try and teach a room full of impressionable 15 year old catholic virgins that oral sex was when a boy put his tongue in your ear. I may have sniggered... a lot. >.>

ps. ok, I may have at that time been a virgin, and technically catholic (if you count unwilling baptism), but I was never that impressionable. I was an outcast. I didn't go weak in the knees and make oooh noises when shown films of the process of foetus development in the womb.

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Oh dear ... well, maybe aural sex ...

[blamebrampton.livejournal.com]

I thought lj had eaten my comment, but then there it was! Deleted the double ...