Aurora Central Students Make An Unexpected Detour in Rome
By Amanda Hudson, News Editor
AURORA—Four adults and 13 students (freshmen through seniors) from Aurora Central Catholic High School were on a trip organized by Educational Tours for Students over Easter Sunday, which they celebrated at Como Cathedral in Lake Como, Italy.
Then Pope Francis died on Easter Monday.
A few days later, senior Natalia Salazar and the other ACC students along with two non-Catholic students from Newfoundland who were traveling in the same tour group waited in line for three hours to enter the basilica and pass by the pope’s body.
“Obviously we didn’t expect the announcement the pope had died,” Salazar says. “It took one hour to get past security (but the wait) actually wasn’t that bad. Everyone was pretty spread out.”
The tour had not included the inside of St. Peter’s Basilica, so she was thrilled to be able to enter. “I took one look inside the basilica and was totally blown away,” Salazar says, adding, “It was just so amazing.”
Admitting that she is not normally comfortable around the body of someone who has died, Salazar says the experience “was kind of heartwarming that they allowed people to see him. It was so great to see (all) the people. There were a lot of tourists and groups as well as the teen jubilee group. I heard so many different languages. So great they came all this way and got to experience it.”
ACC Director of Admissions Jacquie May was among the chaperones. She was in Rome with her family at Christmastime in 2019 and present for Pope Francis’ Christmas blessing. Her experience of the visitation was “just incredible,” she says. “I get chills; it moved me beyond words.”
“I was so pleased,” May adds, “that the students grasped how this was an opportunity of a lifetime. They were patient (in line) and willing to deviate from some of the tour’s other sites.”
The group traveled from April 17-27, and the tour began in Switzerland before going to Italy’s Venice, Florence, Assisi and Rome. In Assisi, they had the opportunity to view the body of Carlo Acutis whose planned canonization was postponed when Pope Francis died.
Salazar says she first had thought to join a tour group that was heading to London, but her mother suggested, “Why don’t you try somewhere different?”
Since the colosseum, Salazar says, was on her “bucket list,” she chose Italy as her “somewhere different.” And that led to the likely-once-in-a-lifetime chance to experience one step of the transition from one Holy Father to another.
“I had an amazing time,” Salazar says, adding that she tossed a coin into the Trevi Fountain because custom has it that when you do, you definitely will return to Rome.
