I'm Back

After a very relaxing several days, I am back. I spent a lot of time sleeping, reading, in the hotel pool, and exploring New England.

I will write more about what I did on the short break, but right now I want to tell you what I found in my mailbox when I arrived home.

The papal calendars are here and they are beautiful! They are also a bit larger than most calendars I have seen for sale here. The pictures of Pope Benedict are beautiful. This calendar will hang proudly in my office.

Photo by Domini Sumus

Pope Calendar Still News

The Pope calendar is still newsworthy. The BBC posted this article today:

Benedict XVI, the shy former disciple of that most media-friendly of popes, John Paul II, has entered an area of the mass communications market that his predecessor apparently never tapped.

The Polish pope could easily have filled out a wall calendar had he wanted to.

"He would have had his foreign journeys and St Peter's crammed from one end to the other as he made saints, and then he would have probably had himself doing lunch with his bishops and cardinals around him, tucking in and furiously debating stem cells or something," says veteran Vatican-watcher John Wilkins.

"With John Paul II, you hardly had time to breathe - when he went to America, his entourage called him the White Tornado. He was an actor, he loved the stage, he had enormous charisma."

Had such a calendar existed - and as far as Italian magazine Famiglia Cristiana is aware, it did not - there might well have been a glimpse of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger standing shyly in the background somewhere.

In his new incarnation as Pope Benedict XVI, John Paul II's former right hand man has come into the foreground, and he agreed this summer to be photographed for a charity wall calendar produced by the magazine.

Read the rest here.

You Know You Want the Pope Calendar!

I am sure that just about everyone knows that the Pope has "posed" for a calendar.

I have the ordering information. Forget the exorbitant prices being asked on e-bay. They are selling on e-bay for nearly $30 and some have sold for as much as $66! The real calendar can be ordered directly from the publisher by e-mailing abbonamenti@stpauls.it or vpc@stpauls.it. Send your request and they will send you the price and the online ordering form.

I sent my request in last night and got a response this morning. I'll let you know when they arrive!

For those who don't know about the calendar, here are the details from CNS.

In Italy, where calendars usually feature scantily clad movie stars or action shots of sports heroes, Pope Benedict XVI agreed to be photographed for a calendar to raise money for Rwandan children.

The calendar, to be released Nov. 23 by the Catholic magazine Famiglia Cristiana, features 14 photographs of Pope Benedict taken in August at the papal summer villa in Castel Gandolfo.

The calendar will sell in Italy for 5 euros (US$6.40) with 1 euro (US$1.28) from each calendar going directly to Nazareth Town, a Catholic-run orphanage and hospital caring for more than 300 boys and girls in Mbare, Rwanda.A spokeswoman for Famiglia Cristiana said Nov. 9 there were no plans to publish the calendar outside Italy.

Giancarlo Giuliani, who has been shooting popes for Famiglia Cristiana for 40 years, took the photographs.

"I was on vacation and the editor called and said, 'Come back. We have to go see the pope,'" Giuliani said.He said Colombian Cardinal Alfonso Lopez Trujillo, president of the Pontifical Council for the Family and a longtime supporter of Nazareth Town, originally had asked Famiglia Cristiana and Pope John Paul II to do a benefit calendar.

After Pope John Paul's death in 2005, Pope Benedict offered to fulfill his predecessor's commitment to the project.

"He is more shy than Pope John Paul," Giuliani said. "But he was incredibly kind and willing."

The photographer said he snapped more than 200 shots of the pope in the villa's chapel, library, office and gardens.

"I tried to get the most spontaneous, natural shots," Giuliani said. "I did not try to pose him."

The 200 shots were whittled down to 40, then 14 were chosen: one for the cover and one for each month from December 2006 to December 2007.