Bulletins

March 10, 2013

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Now that the Sistine Chapel is closed due to preparations for the Papal Conclave, we can look forward to smoke sightings from the chimney extension now visible from the terracotta roof of the fifteenth century work commissioned by Pope Sixtus IV, who tasked Baccio Pontelli to design it, Giovannino de Dolci to build it and Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Bottibcelli, Pietro Perugino and Cosimo Roselli to adorn it. Michelangelo and Raphael were hired by Pope Julius II some thirty to sixty years later to bring the work to completion.

 

When Bishop Keating and Fr. Gould sent me to Rome in 1994 to study theology for the Diocese of Arlington it was mostly obscured by scaffolding. The restoration of the famous frescoes had begun in 1979 and finished in 1999, at which point the world was able to see the full beauty of the setting for Papal Masses and Papal Conclaves of the last five centuries. As soon as the doors opened in the morning, veterans of the Vatican Museums would get a jump on the crowds by skipping all the collections, going straight to the "end" of the Museum itinerary and enjoying a few minutes of peaceful solitude in the Sistine Chapel before the rest of the museum crowds caught up to them. In the intervening years it would be a place where some of my classmates and I were privileged to sing in one of the papal choirs during the Pope's annual Mass on the Solemnity of the Baptism of the Lord.

Now we await the day when the doors of the Sistine Chapel will be closed to the general public, closed to everyone but the 115 Cardinals who will elect the next Bishop of Rome. The church understands herself as the Body of Christ and as always being in need of reform: sancta Ecclesia semper reformanda. All believers and every generation need to purify their hearts and reform their lives.

On whatever day is announced to be the first day of the Papal Conclave, St. John the Beloved Catholic Church will open its doors for Eucharistic Adoration during the first 24 hours of the Cardinals' sequestration. We will pray to the Holy Spirit, that the Cardinal electors receive the assistance of heaven just as Mary and the Apostles did leading up to Pentecost, that we receive a Holy Father who will please God with his virtue and wisdom and that he will receive our stout cooperation, filial love and reverent obedience. There is a reason that we are not called "members" but the "Faithful".

Semper fi! God bless you.

Fr. Christopher J. Pollard