by Moira Cullings
moira.cullings@theleaven.org
ROME — Father Daniel McCarthy, OSB, remembers the moment Pope Benedict XVI was elected on April 19, 2005.
“I ran upriver and across to be in the piazza when Benedict was announced,” said Father Daniel.
“It was pretty exciting,” he continued. “You’re there as [the church is] making history. There was this whole crowd and everyone’s listening. Everyone wants to know who it is.
“And all the bells all over town are ringing because they mark a change of pontificate.”
Father Daniel is a monk of St. Benedict’s Abbey in Atchison. He’s lived in Rome for all but five years since 1999, where he works on the liturgy faculty at The Pontifical Athenaeum of Sant’Anselmo.
He was in London for the Easter holiday when Pope Francis died on April 21 and expected the city to be bustling when he returned before the conclave.
“The excitement is having all the cardinals come,” he said. “They’ll be in town, and they’ll be at dinners out at restaurants.
“I don’t know if we’ll have any guests at Sant’Anselmo in our guest quarters. We normally don’t host cardinals, but [at] the [Pontifical] North American College in Rome, where our seminarians live, they have quarters just for the American cardinals.”
The atmosphere around the Vatican had already been full of energy before the pope passed away, said Father Daniel.
“This is a Holy Year, and Rome has been expecting 35 million pilgrims just for the Holy Year on top of tourists,” he said. “The city’s becoming very full.”
Father Daniel arrived in London on Holy Saturday and didn’t expect the pope to pass away since he was out and about the day before.
“He insisted on greeting people, and it’s so lovely that he did,” said Father Daniel. “He came to greet all the faithful and pilgrims at Easter Sunday liturgy.”
Father Daniel met Pope Francis during an anniversary celebration for Sant’Anselmo on May 7, 2022.
“I asked him to pray for my brother Mike who underwent open heart surgery the next day,” he said. “His prayer was a consolation to my brother, his wife Eleanor and myself.”
It wasn’t the first time Father Daniel had come close to a pope.
Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI both visited Sant’Anselmo for special Ash Wednesday liturgies.
“The tradition is that the pope comes to Sant’Anselmo where I live and says a prayer,” he said, “and then, we all walk with him in procession to Santa Sabina, where he presides at the Eucharist with the distribution of ashes.”
“One of the reasons they do the liturgy like this in different places around town is because the pope is pastor, in a sense, of the whole city,” he said.
Father Daniel hoped the next pope would have a pastoral care for the people and looked forward to how the conclave would play out.
“Each pope made a contribution to the ongoing life of the church,” he said. “I look forward to the gift the next pope will bring.”
