Thursday, May 28, 2015

Have Camera, Will Travel

Hank Schoepp, retired KPIX news cameraman, was based in the San Francisco Bay Area but his career often took him abroad.  Schoepp has seen the world through a lens and brought back a myriad of images, a few from hell and one from heaven: Pope John Paul II in the Vatican, up close and personal.

Schoepp:  "I had never been to Rome before, let alone the Vatican.  In March of 1987, television station KPIX sent a news crew to profile Pope John Paul II, prior to his planned visit to the United States in September of the same year.  Accompanying me as a working member of the press, the son of the head of the Vatican Communications Office was able to provide us with access to people and places which, until then, had not been observed through a camera lens.  We were privileged to an exclusive coverage of news seldom, if ever, granted to other members of the press.  Certainly, being in close proximity to someone best described as no ordinary man was one of them."

EXCERPT (Chapter 23: Have Camera, Will Travel)   Once again, the Holy Father moved among those who had come to see and touch him, gesturing to all in his path with the Sign of the Cross.  And, once again, I followed along with the camera and my Swiss Guard chaperone, as the pontiff approached a rostrum with a microphone.  Then, just before stepping up to address the crowd, he paused for a moment to acknowledge a little girl who handed him a single flower.  A beautiful child with olive skin and dark eyes, she couldn't have been much older than three or four years.  Pope John Paul II reached down and lifted the child up, kissed her on the forehead and held her tightly in his arms, as if he might be holding onto God, which, of course, he was.  For my part, that moment alone was worth the trip to Rome, to where all roads lead and this chapter ends.

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