Posted: March 19

On vacation in Sicily

(Palermo) Less than an hour from Rome by air, this city on the north coast of Sicily seemed like a good place to spend Holy Week and recover from the general congregation. Three of us from the Curia flew down this morning and now I can say that coming here is a good idea. The Jesuits at the high school where we are staying have been very welcoming, and the bed in my room is nice and firm. I already tried it out for a little three-hour “riposo” this afternoon, and I plan on spending more time there when we are not exploring this city. We celebrated Mass together this evening and shared reflections on our experience of the congregation; all agreed that it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and a privilege to see the Society of Jesus operating at its best. I had a ring-side seat from my vantage point at the head table, one chair away from Father General. On the other hand, running all the computers that controlled the video projector, microphones and voting machines was a constant tension. They mostly worked well, and the few times that the systems hiccupped were enough to remind me of how much trouble I would have were they to fail. Nothing raises the blood pressure like 225 pairs of eyes staring at you while you struggle with a computer. Even when the congregation ended there was lots of work to get the mountain of photographs into some kind of order and to update the web site. That work is still not finished, but yesterday I turned off my computers and packed my suitcase for the first real break since August.

Bill Oulvey is another Jesuit from the Missouri Province. His day job is regional secretary for all the work coming from the United States. During the congregation he was in charge of the four-man crew taking minutes of the proceedings, which run to over 500 pages (even though this was the shortest congregation ever). Claudio Barriga is a Jesuit from Chile who heads the Apostleship of Prayer and helped with hospitality for delegates coming to Rome. We are all three a bit tired and looking forward to having time to enjoy Holy Week. For one thing, your perspective is different if you are in a regular apostolate such as a high school which has its own “congregation” of students, faculty and families. We already saw that this first afternoon. The Jesuits here are connected to regular folks in a different way than is possible for us who live and work in an office building located right next to the Vatican. In a way, it is like being next to the Mall in Washington, D.C. or even close to Disneyland in the sense of an endless stream of visitors. Few people live in our neighbourhood, but we engaged in conversation with a young mother and her three-year old as we struggled to find the right key from a ring of 20 keys to open the gate that lets you off the school grounds here.

Claudio brought his computer with him, but I couldn’t imagine doing that. I do have my camera, of course, but that is different—that is art. And Palermo is supposed to be very interesting. The school where we are is in a newer part of town, filled with pretty ugly apartment houses, but tomorrow we will go exploring.