On day four, instead of going to our classroom in the papal university we were in St. Peter’s Basilica as the Pope was doing a bible study and giving a short speech on the church being close to the community. It was an amazing experience but it was very long.

The Vatican translated the speech into a few different languages including English, German, Portuguese, and others. We also visited the circus Maximus which was a gigantic stadium that hosted the top four sports of Rome including foot racing, chariot racing, gladiator fights, and battle reenactments.

Seeing the Pope was our world religions class and experience for the day. The Pope is very involved with the people and before the service began he visited a couple hundred people in the auditorium of the Vatican. He is a very nice person and he has a good relationship with the people. You can tell he is trying to reform the church and try to make it friendlier to its people and the international world.

For our international relations we visited the US embassy to the Holy See. This is not the same as the US embassy to Italy because they are completely different nations and the Vatican is an extremely busy place. They also have the second most amount of relations with 180 countries. Only behind the United States. We specifically talked to the economic advisor in the embassy. This is only her second tour and her first tour was in Haiti. The U.S. is starting a new relationship with the Holy See. President Obama had visited with the Pope only a few months ago. This is the one of the most important head of state in recent history. There is a lot of security at the small US embassy but it’s in a prime location and it was very cool to see one of our national embassy.