I ran into a group of more than 30 pilgrims from the United States who have been stuck in Rome since Saturday, and it doesn’t look like they’ll be getting out until next Tuesday.
Thanks to the volcanic ash covering much of Europe, they’ve had a 10-day extension to their trip. They had been to the Shroud of Turin, and were supposed to leave from Milan, but got on a bus to Rome, thinking it would be easier to get out of here. No such luck.
Many are from Wyoming and Montana, and Jackson Hole has never seemed so far away. They’re keeping spirits up, though, enjoying the good weather and the good ice cream.
“When you’re visiting things like the Shroud of Turin, and seeing the nails from the cross at the church of the Santa Croce, it’s like you’re getting to share a little bit of this,” said the group’s chaplain, Father Joseph Geders.
“It’s one of those occasions where life is just taken out of your hands,” Geders said.
It gets tiring when you want to be home, but it could be worse. At least they’re in a hotel, and not just camped out at the airport.
While they were making the best of a tough situation – one woman was trying to plan a two-day trip to Venice – a long delay can also be extremely serious. One woman has her 78-year-old mother who needs to get her pacemaker battery replaced, which involves a surgical operation.
Many of the pilgrims had purchased trip insurance before leaving. While most were happy about that, a couple complained that their insurance company was hardly coughing up enough for an extra 10 days.