When we stumbled upon Pope Francis–by pure coincidence

Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore by night. All photos: Christer A. Henriksen

When I was in junior high we studied Paul the Apostles Epistle to the Romans for a semester, before we had to deliver a written assignment on the topic.

Our Christian teacher, a conservative little lady, always with a headscarf and a black skirt, made no compromises with us during this period.

The Letter to the Romans, she said, is one of Paul's most important writings in the New Testament, written to the Christians in Rome around AD 55. It outlines the core doctrines of the Christian faith, among other things God’s righteousness revealed in Jesus Christ and justification by faith as the way to salvation.

As a kid I was never particularly interested in the topic nor Christianity nor religion, even though I have stuck with my childhood faith ever since.

Since then my relationship to Christianity has been mostly limited to the yearly Christmas service as well as some Lord’s prayer from time to time. But the faith has been there, somewhere, despite me recognizing it seldomly.

Yes, I do believe in Jesus Christ and God, but at the end of the day, also in science. Are those two compatible? Is it possible to believe in both? Can religion and science be companions? Like two friendly neighbors who cut their own lawns but share the same driveway?

Georges Lemaître (1894-1966) was a Belgian physicist and mathematician. He was the first one to propose the idea about the expanding universe and the idea of the beginning by a primeval atom–later named the “Big Bang” (though not by him). At the same time Lemaître was a catholic priest, reflecting his deep commitment to both science and faith (it was not as unusual in his time as it might seem today). Even the pope at the time saw Lemaître’s theory as compatible with Christian teachings on creation and publicly praised Lemaître’s work, especially for its potential to reconcile scientific discoveries with religious concepts of creation. Lemaître himself believed in God as the creator, but he also viewed the Big Bang theory as a scientific explanation of how the universe began. He did not see his scientific work as proof of God’s existence, but rather as a way to describe the physical processes involved in the universe’s origin. Lemaître’s religious interests remained as important to him as science throughout his life, American Museum of Natural History writes in an article titled “Georges Lemaître, Father of the Big Bang”.

The nave of Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore.

Now, I’m not a catholic nor devout Christian. There are also some significant differences between catholicism and protestantism, the latter which I have grown up with. I do not live a particularly “Christian life” so to say, where one would regularly go to church and where life is centered around Jesus Christ. But at the same time I do, when thinking about it, live with the hope of salvation in Christ. In the end, whether you believe in something or not–as a religious person, an atheist, an agnostic, spiritual but not religious etc.–it’s all about being a good person; serving others, avoiding harm, living with humility.

Visiting Rome in Italy is a religious experience. At least that’s how it feels like to me. And I bet it would be for you too.

The divine beauty of the city with all its architecture, old buildings, churches, basilicas, and history, spanning thousands of years back, is beyond breathtaking. (Especially if you look beyond the dark side of history.) Just imagining and realizing that something of this extraordinary beauty was built hundreds and hundreds of years ago is a real struggle for your brain to comprehend.

Of course, a large part of visiting Rome is about seeing all the famous spots like Pantheon, Fontana di Trevi, Colosseum, Piazza Navona, Trastevere, Castel Sant'Angelo, the Vatican and so forth. But independently of your personal believings, visiting the numerous churches and basilicas (Rome has over 900 churches, making it the city with most in the world) is also an integral part of the visit to The Eternal City. The churches themselves are like an incredible piece of art–from the grandiose exterior to its carefully decorated interior with frescoes on the walls and ceilings, often telling a story from the bible. Entering such a building is both thrilling and awe-inspiring–and you see them on every street corner. In other words: Experiencing Rome is a must.

It was the second Sunday of Advent when Kristina and I had been working at a coffee shop next to Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore for a few hours when we needed a break. We decided to go for a walk. But just as we got outside we noticed that it was beginning to pour down. In unison we sighed.

I looked across the square, towards the 75 meter high church in front of us. “Let’s go inside Santa Maria Maggiore and have a look,” I suggested, as I drew the hood of my jacket on.

We walked across Via Merulana, only to be stopped by three policemen before entering the square in front of the church. They made sure no one with large bags could pass without being vetted. Since we didn’t have any, they waved us through without any trouble. Inside the square I noticed that the whole place was fenced in, something it was not the day before. Strange. We continued, only to be stopped once more before we could continue towards the main entrance of Santa Maria Maggiore. In a small glass cubicle we had to pass a security check, as if we were about to board an airplane. We didn’t think a lot about it, it’s an extraordinary basilica with its 7,300 square meters built in the mid-fourth century. Surely a terrorist target, therefore the precautions, I thought.

I was wrong to say the least.

Finally inside the basilica our jaws dropped to the floor by the sight. I had beforehand seen some pictures of the interior, but they were nowhere near doing Santa Maria Maggiore any justice.

The main room of the basilica is roughly 80 x 30 meters. On each side of the room are 21 marble columns in a row, supporting the golden roof that sparkles like a diamond. Just beneath the roof is a row of arched windows. In between all of these are frescoes and decorations like I had never seen before.

It seems like empty talk; but seriously, I have never seen anything like it. It was beyond beautiful.

We looked at each other with a complete surprise in our face as we tried to take some pictures of what we were witnessing.

“And we went here by pure coincidence,” I said, shaking my head in disbelief at what I was experiencing.

As we walked around, looking at as much as possible, afraid that it would disappear at any moment, I started to notice that there were a lot of people inside. And they were all standing in a big L-shaped line, pressing against a fence that seemed to be temporarily. Most of them were looking towards a chapel to the right, where the basilicas souvenir shop was placed in a room next to it.

“What’s happening?” Kristina asked.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “Seems like something is about to happen.”

“What?”

“Ahh,” I said. “So that’s what all the police outside were about … you don’t think it’s the pope?”

“The pope? He is supposed to be at Piazza di Spagna today where he pays homage to Maria because of some day it is today, I read on Instagram,” she said.

“But this is Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore. It would make sense–or?”

“Perhaps. Noo … you don’t think it is him?”

“I hope so.” I giggled.

We continued inwards through the nave of the church. As we got to the line facing the altar, a sudden gasp went through the crowds. The people next to the chapel, all the way down to the right, were starting to cheer and yell at someone.

And then I knew.

The nave of the basilica was filled with rows of chairs. I jumped onto an empty chair right behind the line, found my camera and then I saw him. He sat in a wheelchair, being pushed by a priest in a black robe. Pope Francis. Was this for real? I looked towards Kristina, who I saw was filming with her iPhone.

People were shouting and waving towards Pope Francis. Even I waved like a maniac with one hand as I took pictures with the other. He waved back to us and smiled as he got pushed from all the way back of the basilica and towards the Pauline chapel next to the altar, where one of the most important Marian paintings, the Salus Populi Romani, is located. The Salus Populi Romani is according to tradition, made by Saint Luke the Evangelist–a disciple to Paul the Apostle. The painting shows Maria and baby Jesus holding a gospel book on a gold ground. The painting arrived in Rome in 590 A.D., and is highly linked to the identity of Rome and of the Popes. This Sunday Pope Francis had come to the basilica to pray in front of the painting, on what is a special holiday for the Catholics. The celebration that Maria, since she was chosen as Jesus’ mother, was born without sin. In fact, Pope Francis has said that he has a special connection to Santa Maria Maggiore and has often gone here to pray before. He has also constructed a burial vault near the painting, intended to be his final resting place.

It was surreal to be standing on the chair looking at Pope Francis in his white dress and cap. I was in the presence–only a couple of meters–of Pope Francis. I actually felt like I was looking with awe at the representative of Christ on Earth. Which is how a protestant Christian does not look at Christianity, by recognising the authority of the pope and seeing him as the spiritual successor of Saint Peter.

After the pope had prayed in front of the painting in the Pauline chapel, he took the time to greet some of the people along the line while heading back. Several grown ups were crying. Then the pope, along with his cardinals, priests and the Swiss guard, left from where they came.

The Pauline chapel, where the Salus Populi Romani is located.

As soon as the temporary fences were gone, we were allowed to walk inside the chapel where the pope exited. It was beautiful, of course it was, but the reason he went there was the door that led to the souvenir shop, which had an exit out to his motorcade.

We walked inside the shop. “I have to buy something,” I said. “Pope Francis has been only meters away from all of these things.” It felt as if all of the things were blessed and if you wore any of them I would be too.

After a quick look I settled on a leather bracelet with a silver cross. The cross has engravings of a shepherd who guides his flock and carries the lost sheep on his shoulders. It’s the same cross as Pope Francis carries around his neck. The cross’s simple, linear style is intended as a symbol of a new ecclesiastical era, a poor Church among the poor, as Pope Francis has indicated. Throughout his papacy Pope Francis has emphasized the importance of the poor and marginalized, and has himself refused to live in the penthouse apartment at the Vatican’s Apostlic Palace in favour of a modest two-room residence.

Later that same night we were laying in our bed in our hotel room. On the other side of the dark and narrow cobblestone street I could see the orange wall of Basilica di Santa Prassede.

We had been there the day before. The outside was simple, almost basic and boring, not like the stunning Santa Maria Maggiore. Only the entrance, a dark brown door with a cross above, revealed that something more was behind the wall. But as we went inside we were blown away. It was as if we had entered the Weasley family's tent in Harry Potter, small looking on the outside but enormous on the inside. The room shot into the air. The width and length burst out in each direction. If you yelled inside the echo would last  for years, I guessed.

We walked around inside the church, looking at frescoes and the tens of thousands pieces of colored mosaics that made numerous pictures on the walls. Inside one of the chapels was a piece of a broken column. It was placed inside a capsule, protected from anyone touching it. It turned out to be the pillar that Jesus was tied to when he was flogged before his crucifixion in Jerusalem.

I was astonished. I walked as close as I could get to it, leaning in towards the capsule. I could hardly believe what I was looking at or what I was in the presence of. Was I, this simple guy from far, far north in Norway, just centimeters from a column that Jesus had been bound to? Was it possible to be closer to Christ, in terms of physical objects?

And here I was, laying in my hotel bed, looking at the orange wall with the window with iron bars on the outside, knowing that the column was on the other side. I could almost touch it from where I laid. Surreal.

Paul the Apostles Epistle to the Romans wasn’t only a letter about theology and doctrines. Paul was planning to visit Rome on his way to Spain and the letter was a way for him to create a relationship with the Christians in Rome before he arrived.

After being in Rome for a week, my relationship with the locals was equal to zero. Had I spoken to anyone else here besides Kristina or employees at cafés or restaurants or the grocery store? Nope. I had even said to Kristina, after seeing a lot of cute dogs in the streets, that one of my missions was to ask one of the owners if I could pet their dog. So far I have not followed through. But as I have gotten older, I've come to realize how important it is to have a social circle you trust, a good relationship with others, and a place in your local community.

As I turned over in bed to turn off the light, I saw the bracelet with the silver cross resting on the nightstand. I’m not a Catholic nor a devout Christian, but seeing the shepherd who carried the lost sheep on his shoulders felt good. I smiled. I turned off the lights, gave Kristina a goodnight kiss and falled asleep.