When a Holy Heroes Guide sang for Pope John Paul II!

On World Mission Sunday on October 22, 2000, the St. Mary’s Cathedral Choir (the cathedral choir for San Francisco, CA) was invited to Rome to sing for Pope John Paul II.

Holy Heroes Guide Virginia was one of the youngest members of the choir (only 7 at the time), but she was able to go with the choir for this incredible opportunity!

Clara pulled out the photo albums to find the pictures we’ve posted here. Don’t we all look young in this picture of us with Virginia and baby Trey? (Clara and Margaret stayed home in CA with grandma.)

[NOTE: Yes, Trey was just a few months old so he had to go with Mom…and during the trip he had his first baby food–he was so hungry with all the hours of traveling! And we learned Italian baby food has lots of yummy sugar…we created a baby boy monster! He wasn’t as happy with American baby food when we got home, but he kept gobbling it down anyway.]

On this trip, after a Wednesday audience in St Peter’s Square, the choir was supposed to sing for a Holy Mass in St Peter’s. We were let into a parking lot by the Swiss Guards and told to wait there until they would allow us inside.

I was talking to others in the group when Ken said, “Kerri, I just saw ___. He’s walking over there.” At the sound of his name, a group of nuns took off running across the lot to cut ___ off.

I took off with them–and you see one of the pictures we got when we caught up to him!

Cardinal Ratzinger was so gracious and allowed us to take picture after picture, before he finally said he had to hurry to not be late to a meeting. We were so busy taking his picture with others in our group, that we never got a picture of him with us. We regretted not asking to take a picture with him a few years later when he was announced as Pope Benedict XVI!

World Mission Sunday in 2000 was also the 3 year anniversary of Pope John Paul II declaring St. Therese a Doctor of the Church! She is one of the favorite saints in our house. In fact, we love her so much, we named one of our children after her!

Another thing Pope John Paul II did during his papacy was create the Luminous Mysteries of the Rosary! He recommended they be prayed on Thursdays, so we’ll pray them tonight.

While visiting the John Paul II National Shrine in D.C., our videographer, Tiffany, was able to receive a tour of the chapel from Sister Veritas Green of the Congregation of the Sisters of Our Lady of Mercy (the same order as St. Faustina!). As soon as we saw the footage, we knew that we wanted to share the tour with our Holy Heroes fans! She explains the symbolism of the mosaics depicting the mysteries and the link to both Old and New Testament stories.

Children love the story of the life of this great Pope. Get Glory Stories 11 “Be Not Afraid” on CD here or instant MP3 download here.  Enjoy!