my pope's visit blog

yes yes I know he left yesterday but it seems like so many others have had a Pope story thought I would add my own.
So my family is Catholic. No no very Catholic maybe even too Catholic. I had a great-uncle that was a priest, a great-aunt that was a nun supposedly way back there was a bishop, my uncle is a Christian Brother(sort of the male equivalent to a nun). Most of the family was educated in Catholic schools-personally I have 8 years under my belt, my brother 12. My parents have always been very involved in the church and in fact my dad is a deacon. Unlike the fine Southern Baptist tradition of waving your arms and declaring yourself a deacon, in the Catholic church becoming a deacon is a pretty big deal entailing school & an ordination similar to that of a priest. Not content with just being a deacon my father is indeed super-Deacon, he is charge of formation for the diocese of Bridgeport, very involved on the national level & also works for Bishop Lori(Bridgeport diocese). My father is also good friends with Cardinal Edward Egan of NY whom he first met when he was our bishop in CT. Dad even went to Rome when the cardinal became a cardinal & concelebrated at his first mass. All that lead up to....and so Dad was invited to the Papal mass at St Patrick's in NYC this past weekend by Cardinal Eagan. He was also suppose to meet the Pontiff-just for a photo not the beer & schnitzel lunch. I watched all 3 hours of coverage on MSNBC but not even a glimpse of my dad although as D pointed out there was a lot of older gentleman in their white dresses how could I tell?
3 things about the newscast glared out at me they kept commenting on his thick German accent. ok now I am a good-German girl with a grandfather that came over on the boat plus I worked in a German bakery for a number of years so maybe it's just me but a German accent is not so hard to understand. Even if it was the man has mastered the English language as well as oh 1 or 2 others.
-the second point was the abuse scandal. I know it happened. Hell turned out I knew a few of the priests doing the abusing. It was/is/will always be horrible not even arguing that point. I can not even imagine how horrible it would be, hell I would skin anyone alive if they touched my son but in all fairness the church has been working to try and fix these horrific problems for several years now. No it does not excuse the past but maybe they could not have mentioned it every 10 minutes or so?
-finally the mass at St Pat's was beautiful even on the telly-we Catholics can do pageantry