“From the Archives” — Witnesses to Church History

Shortly after becoming pastor at Saint Mary in 2004, Father Dennis Kleinmann began an annual pilgrimage to Rome, and other Italian sites, for the eighth-grade students who had just been confirmed. Each student was accompanied by a parent. The pilgrimages, during Easter week, were immediately successful. The confirmation pilgrimages were discontinued during the COVID pandemic, but the custom returned in 2023.

During the 2005 Saint Mary pilgrimage, the confirmandi group was part of a huge crowd of people standing in vigil in Saint Peter’s Square, below Pope John Paul II’s apartment, when he died on April 2. It was a very sad, but memorable, moment for these young Catholics. Although they were in Italy at the start of the interregnum (the time of vacancy between popes), they did not see the white smoke announcing to that a new pope, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger, had been elected.

However, another Saint Mary group, led by then-parochial vicar Father John Melmer, was in Italy two weeks later as cardinals from around the world met in conclave to elect the next successor to Saint Peter. On their first day in Rome, the pilgrims from Saint Mary visited the temporary tomb of John Paul II in the crypt area below Saint Peter. They were in Assisi and near the end of their trip on April 19, when word came from the Vatican: “Habemus papam — We have a pope!” They gathered in front of a TV in the lobby of their 700- year-old hotel to watch English-language CNN coverage as the new pontiff — Pope Benedict XVI — emerged on the Vatican balcony. (To salute the new pope’s homeland, the hotel concierge distributed glasses of German champagne to the Saint Mary pilgrims!) A few in the Saint Mary group, along with Father Melmer, then took a train from Assisi and back to Rome to spend their last full day in Italy in Saint Peter’s Square, enjoying the celebration.

So, Saint Mary parishioners were in Italy in April 2005 to experience both ends of the papal transition — the death of Pope John Paul II and the election of Pope Benedict XVI.

— Kitty Guy, Parish Historian