Benedicto! Benedicto!

Welcome to the papal moshpit
Linda Morris

Religious Affairs Writer

and Josephine Tovey

July 14, 2008
"IT'S amazing … I felt lifted. He's like Jesus Christ on Earth," said Liba Vazquez, 17. It was worth waiting two hours in the cold for a glimpse of the Pope, she said. Her brother Amadeo said:

"Just seeing the Pope is something." Scores of pilgrims and cheering onlookers braved chilly conditions to catch a glimpse of the Pope's arrival and then lined the motorcade route from Richmond RAAF base all the way to his retreat at Kenthurst.

Maggie Llovet, a Spanish pilgrim who came with her Australian hosts, the Vazquez family from Glenhaven, was among 200 who gathered at the air base entrance. As the Pope was driven past she said pilgrims shouted "Long live the Pope" in different languages. "There was lots of singing, and big loud cheers. This is going to be a great experience," she said. The public were kept well away from the Pope, with the perimeter of the air base patrolled by Defence Force personnel, but they lined the fences and climbed trees for best vantage. When the jet touched down on time just before 3pm the public road outside the base turned into a car park. After a brief stay at the tarmac, the Pope's motorcade, which included three ambulances, was given a police escort to the Kenthurst Study Centre, a retreat run by Opus Dei, where he will recuperate over the next three days from his 23-hour flight from Rome, the longest foreign trip of his papacy. He begins his formal tour on Thursday.

His arrival drew solemn prayers and jubilant cheers from more pilgrims, and one group of onlooking neighbours raised a few stubbies. About 400 people gathered opposite the Study Centre in Pitt Town Road, with most people lucky enough to get a glimpse of the man himself, waving and smiling, as he whizzed down the winding street, accompanied by motorcycles and hovering helicopters.

Gerard Van Ommen Kloeke and his family were quietly murmuring the rosary behind police barricades on the side of the crowded street. The Canadian-born father of four, who lives in Sydney with his Australian wife, had seen the previous Pope at World Youth Day 1993 in Denver. "I wanted to give them [his children] the chance to experience that same excitment for themselves," he said. Mr Van Ommen Kloeke said he planned to hold up his youngest child as the pontiff cruised past, hoping she might be a "Pope magnet" and attract a wave.

When the motorcade finally passed there was no time for quiet reflection. The crowd burst to life, largely thanks to a cohort of about 50 teenage pilgrims from Spain, who erupted into cheers and began chasing the car down the street, chanting "Benedicto! Benedicto!"

Australian pilgrims could only look on and clap as the mood quickly changed into a football-fever style atmosphere. Police, who had been holding the public behind barricades, had no choice but to let the revelling crowds spill on to the streets to sing and dance and wave their World Youth Day flags. But it would not have been a proper start to the Pope's visit without some cynical Sydney-siders looking on. A group of neighbours gathered at the house opposite the Opus Dei retreat, making their way through a case of beer as they enjoyed their prime position.

"We're the welcoming party," said one man, raising his drink to the crowd. "Yeah, I'm thinking of converting," another yelled.

In Parramatta, Sydney's Maronite Christians turned out in force to welcome the leader of their branch of Catholicism. Patriarch Mar Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir, along with about 100 other Maronite bishops and priests, presided over a Mass at Parramatta Stadium. The 20,000 strong crowd was made up of mostly Lebanese-Australian families, who had turned out for a rare glimpse of their spiritual leader, who many described as "our Pope". Bernadette Bousrama, one of the young volunteers at the event, had attended several other events over the previous week with the Patriarch. "It's been deadset amazing," she said. The Pope comes to a small outpost of Catholicism.

There are 5.12 million Catholics in Australia, comprising 25.8 per cent of the population.

But a dwindling number - less than 14 per cent - now regularly attend Mass. Pope Benedict XVI is largely a mystery to most Australians, says the papal biographer Paul Collins. "I think Australians are likely to see an old style European gentleman, an old style European intellectual," he said. "He showed in Cologne and the US he is able to relate to large crowds and take on some populist role, but that is not his natural style. He showed in the United States he had a good understanding of pluralistic democracy, which his predecessors lacked. "He will have difficulty with the Australian character, our understated way of operating and our slightly ironic way of existence. It could be unfortunate if he reads that as a lack of religiosity,

I simply do not buy the notion that Australians are a secular lot of materialistic slobs.

We are not like Americans, who are ostentatiously religious, so we could be easy to misread."

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