Friday, April 22, 2005

my one (and only) pope story

In 1984 the Pope visited Edmonton and at the time I was working in a downtown Hotel. The Pope stayed at the Sisters of Providence facility across town so the Nuns got booted and had to stay in the Hotel where I worked, along with a whole entourage of Papal tour people which included some Swiss Guards and a couple of Cardinals one fairly obnoxious and the other quite nice.

One of the Sisters was quite old and frail and the Hotel staff took a liking to her because she was very friendly and went around every morning asking people how they were doing. One morning she stepped off the elevator and made her way across the lobby and out the front door of the Hotel. On either side of the doors were full length glass windows which had no markings on them and had just been cleaned. Instead of going through the doors she walked smack into one of the windows and bounced backwards onto her ass. A bunch of us all saw it happen and ran like crazy over to see if she was okay. The Concierge got there first and leaned over and said to her Jesus Christ! Are you okay? She was okay, but Concierge got a little talking to later that day.

The next morning the Cardinal (the decent one) was talking to a desk clerk and said ...that was something about the sister walking into the window was'nt it... (or something like that) and the desk clerk said blandly yeah...Jesus that must've hurt. I thought I was going to die right on the spot.

By the time they all left the Hotel's General Manager who was Catholic was pretty much over the edge and a lot of people had red marks on their rear ends.

Okay, the Pope was not in this story, that is true. But the Pope caused the story by dislocating the Nuns. And the story occurred with me being within 3 miles of the Pope, which is the closest I've ever been to a Pope. As far as Pope stories go its not one of the best ones. If you can do better lets hear it. Please recommend this post

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