VATICAN, Rome (MindaNews / 8 May) –  The cry of a seagull. That would be the first thing that any one of the cardinals would hear upon waking up, on their mission to elect a new pope.

The newer cardinals might even wonder how those birds are numerous in the city, when the nearest seaport is Civitavecchia, some 66 kilometers away from the Vatican.

 But over the centuries those birds had found their way to the Vatican, seat of the 2,000- year-old Roman Catholic church, maybe discovering the food scraps from the almost endless number of tourists that visit the Vatican. You might say, the seagulls have been fed over the years by the Vatican, in the same way that St. Francis of Assisi, the inspiration of Pope Francis, had fed the animals and birds that had come his way.

We were back in the Saint Peter’s Basilica to hear the last novendiale (nine-day mass) for the pontiff who had passed away on easter Monday. I was trying to hear the voice of the Pope or echoes of it in the voices of the cardinals who were saying mass or paying their obligatory respects to the pope.

The seated audience at the last mass at the basilica was almost full, not like the requiem mass for Pope Francis when the crowd of both the dignitaries and the common folk had crammed the piazza, stretching to all the entrances to the square. This time, the crowd had seemed aimless as they milled about the square, still a full two days away from the start of the conclave to elect a new pope. They looked like lost sheep, waiting for a new shepherd to guide them.

That same morning, we went to the Santa Maria Maggiore Basilica to pay our own respects at Pope Francis’ new tomb. There was still a line at the entrance but we had come early and reached the tomb without delay.

The tomb looked the way the news photos had shown it, bare and austere and solemn, just like how the pope tried to live his life as the supreme pontiff of the church. I felt a little emotional standing before the tomb of the pope who we had seen in person in a public audience in February, or three months ago. He had already been sick then, but still he made the rounds of meeting people, and I thought then that he was generous with his time for them.

Outside the basilica, the huge banner saying “GRAZIE FRANCESCO” still proclaimed the city’s gratitude to its bishop for 12 years.

We had also gone to the Santa Maria Maggiore intending to make a short pilgrimage to the four major basilicas in Rome, in keeping with tradition with a Jubilee year when the Vatican opens its holy doors to the public. Those holy doors or the porta santas are sealed with cement and closed to the public until a jubilee year comes every 25 years. Pilgrims knock on entering the massive entrances or touch the metal figures attached to those doors (portam sanctam in Latin).

Our pilgrimage took us to St. Paul’s Basilica (Basilica di San Paolo Fuori la Mura), with its imposing statue of St. Paul fronting the entrance and its four gardens. I was amazed at the huge park fronting the basilica and I imagined how thrilling it would feel after attending Sunday mass to exit the basilica and see that all green space.

At the side of the basilica, a flock of pigeons was feeding on seeds thrown to them by tourists, cementing the image for me of Matthew 6:26:  “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them.”

The tomb of St. Paul is located below the altar and has been in this location for 20 centuries. A chain made up of nine rings can be seen there, referring to the chain which compelled St. Paul to live as a prisoner in Rome.  

On the way to the basilica of St. John the Lutheran, we passed by a monument to St. Francis of Assisi, his mute figure holding up his arms to the sky above him.     

The St. John the Lutheran Basilica (Basilica di San Giovani in Laterano) has a massive metal door already rendered greenish by the ages, with eight-point “starfish” figures hammered on the surface all over. 

 We ended our pilgrimage at the porta santa of the St. Peter’s Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro), finally entering through the holy door which was closed to us in the many times that we had visited the Vatican.

I prayed my gratitude for having the chance to visit the four basilicas during a special Jubilee year for the Vatican, and especially for the blessing of meeting the Pope in person.

A social media post that I read reveals that a lightning storm had occurred near the Vatican on May 5, with the lightning bolt not hitting the dome of St. Peter’s but splitting into more bolts. I was awakened around 4:16 a.m. by the repeated thunder and on opening the shutters saw that Rome was under a light shower. But I felt no fear, because I remembered the word “HOPE” already imprinted on my mind as a personal legacy that was given to me by our beloved Pope Francis.

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. Brady Eviota wrote and edited for the now defunct Media Mindanao News Service in Davao and also for SunStar Cagayan de Oro. He is from Surigao City and now lives in Bern, the Swiss capital located near the Bernese Alps.)