Kalaupapa patients get audience with pope
Pope Benedict XVI enters St. Peter's Square today. During a papal audience, the pope thanked Hawaii dancers for performing.
Dory Espinda-Aoki (left) and Ka'uhane Aiu (right) perform hula inside Rome's Basilica of St. Mary Major during a Mass today.
Pope Benedict XVI blessed the faithful during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's square at the Vatican today.
Honolulu Bishop Larry Silva spoke to Hansen's disease patients from Kalaupapa just before the pope drove within a few feet of the patients after the event. The group got a front-row seat for today's papal audience with Pope Benedict XVI.
ROME » Pope Benedict XVI came within a few feet of nine Hansen’s disease patients from Kalaupapa, Molokai in St. Peter’s Square today during a ceremony in which the pope thanked “Hawaiian dancers for their performances.”
The patients, who made the nearly 10,000-mile pilgrimage to the Vatican to witness Sunday’s canonization of Mother Marianne Cope for her work in Kalaupapa, got a front row seat for Wednesday’s “papal audience” attended by thousands of people crammed inside St. Peter’s Square.
Under a glorious blue sky, today’s event represented one of the many highlights so far for more than 200 Hawaii residents who began their pilgrimage Friday in Syracuse and Utica, New York, where Cope began her own journey to Hawaii in 1883, en route to her work worthy of a saint in Kalaupapa.
