My friend, Father Placido, who cares for the shrine at Gethsemane, also took care of me when I tore my meniscus on my way to pay him a surprise visit last summer.
Placido runs a tight ship, boasting that he keeps careful watch over priests who come to say Mass at the Church of the Agony, for fear that they will not follow “the rules” and turn the Mass into “some sort of carnival.”
I am anxious to see him in June to tease him that I caught him on camera turning the visit of the Pope into a carnival. He is the one taking a picture! It will be fun to ask him about that moment …
… and to ask him what he is saying to the Pope right after he took the photo, with both his hands raised in a questioning fashion.
How funny that even priests have a hard time not “practicing what they preach”!