Dear Father Carrón:

Because of my husband Giacomo’s doctoral studies, my family and I have been living in England for the past two months, and we will stay here a few more. We immediately signed up to go meet the Pope at the Mass for the beatification of Cardinal Newman. The fact that, at that point in time, we had a 10-month-old baby, and a second baby on the way, wasn’t a serious objection to trusting the proposal. We left on Saturday night. After two hours in the car and a bus trip, at 6 am we arrived at the field where Mass would take place. We then waited four hours under a relentless drizzle, becoming cold and wet. I took my husband aside and, overcome with fatigue, I asked him, “Do you know why we came here? What were we thinking?!” Not that the reasons of our initial consent were less true; yet, in that precise moment, at 6 am, under duress, they didn’t mean anything to me. I kept going through those reasons in my head, thinking back to all those hard circumstances in the past that later on turned out to be great opportunities. I said to myself, “Hold on. You’ll see that this time, it will be the same.” Yet, I grew more and more disheartened, and I spent those four hours holding my breath. Then the miracle of my change happened. Around 10 am, the Pope appeared and, when I saw that man, everything changed; in front of a person, everything changed. I felt I was one with the Apostles in front of Jesus. I had spent four hours trying to think positive and to be happy, without success, and in an instant the gaze of that man had changed me, to the point that I started looking around and asking for help from those who were next to me. Those same people, who before were just another nuisance, became a blessing and my own struggle became a blessing too. What filled me with joy was that my fatigue was still all there, but it finally had a meaning.

Tecla, Southampton (England)