University students travel to Philly, hoped to see the pope

Written by: Nicole Montero/Asst. News Director

Evelyn Hernandez, a senior special education major, traveled 1,195 miles for a chance to see Pope Francis in the flesh.
Francis, the 266th pope of the Catholic Church, appeared at the triennial World Meeting of the Families in Philadelphia, offering mass Sunday on the steps of the city’s art museum.

More than 25 families and University students made the trip from Miami to attend, approximately 300 in total.

They traveled in seven buses. For Hernandez this meant sleeping in an uncomfortable bus with no leg room and no reclining chairs. But it was worth it.

“We prayed and sang, and it was still an amazing trip,” she said. “I felt so blessed and amazed to just be there listening to him live. It was calming and I was at peace, something that’s very hard for me on a normal basis.”

Hernandez said she waited more than three hours in a crowd that might have exceeded 1 million people.

Their goal was to get into the mass of people and see the pope cruising through the streets of Philadelphia.
It didn’t happen.
“I still heard him and saw him through the jumbotron,” she said. “Truth is, I probably wouldn’t have watched it or heard it back at home because life gets in the way. Sometimes you need a time off to find yourself and evaluate what’s important.” For Hernandez and her friends, it was a pilgrimage.

The group departed Miami via bus at around 7 p.m. Friday and arrived in Philadelphia Saturday at about 9 p.m.
Ivan Rodriguez, a priest ordained a year and a half ago at Miami’s Mother of Christ Catholic Church, helped lead the pilgrimage.
“We came from Miami to see the pope because we belong to the church, and the pope is our vicar,” said Rodriguez. “We got to meet other people with the same beliefs as us, and that’s beautiful.”

The World Meeting of the Families is an international celebration of family, community and faith.

At the Sunday mass, the pope highlighted the importance of the family in the 21st century.

“What kind of world do we want to leave to our children?”he said. “May our children find in us models and incentives to communion… and men and women capable of joining others in bringing to full flower all the good seeds, which the Lord has sown.”

Tommaso Benigni, a senior biomedical engineering major and the fifth child of 10 in his Italian family, said the trip was a “spiritual tool” for both him and his relatives.

His parents came to the United States as missionaries more than 20 years ago, dedicated to spreading the word about God’s love.

For 21-year-old Benigni, the meeting was the perfect opportunity to show how much he values family.

“It was important to come to Philadelphia in person as a show of support for the Catholic Church,” Benigni said. “We need to show that it isn’t some dead religion that no one practices.”
Benigni thinks it’s especially important to preserve the image of the family.

“There’s constantly people bombarding you with opinions about what a family is, especially in social media,” he said. “The pope is someone who has an actual message and his opinion matters.”
Lucia Benigni, Tommaso’s mother and one of the coordinators of the trip, said the pilgrimage was a special opportunity to be in communion with the pope.

“For us Catholics, the pope is a foundation of Jesus Christ,” she said. “This World Meeting of the Families is especially important to reaffirm what the family is: a communion of love where we learn to give our life to the other.” In his homily, Pope Francis spoke about this same thing and focused on what it means to be a family.
“It’s a father and mother united in love with their children,” said Lucia. “It’s for the service of the other, not only for happiness.”
The group returned to Miami on Tuesday, Sept. 29.

“We’ll hopefully get to find our vocation,” said Lucia. “Our mission is to evangelize because we’re all called to announce the love of God to all men.”

And that’s what the group did when they spoke about God’s love to strangers, telling them He loves them “as they are and with all their flaws”.

“This trip has made me see how important the family is,” said Hernandez. “I wouldn’t have lived it the same way if I was home. It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity.”

Nicole.montero@fiusm.com

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