What’s it like for someone who is not Catholic to be covering the Vicar of Christ for the media?

Busted Halo’s radio show is produced by Robyn Gould, and she describes her experience working in the Catholic media and covering the most Catholic event of the year:

BH: What is it like being a Jewish woman working for the Catholic channel? How has it affected your own perceptions of religion and faith?

RG: I certainly follow my own faith and spirituality, but I’m not Catholic. I didn’t grow up Catholic and I might not identify with a lot of the Catholic traditions and things like that but I certainly have respect for it and have grown to have more respect for it in the last year-and-a-half with just knowledge of it, learning about it. I began with this event on a professional level as a radio producer, and that was my attachment to it. But, especially with the timing of it, with his visit being over Passover, I’m what they call a “holiday Jew” [laughs] meaning I go to Synagogue and I celebrate holidays, but I don’t observe Shabbat every Friday and I don’t follow kosher laws and I don’t go to Synagogue regularly. But with the pope coming during Passover…even I had a little bit of a grudge against working over Passover at the beginning of all of this.

BH: Really?

RG: Yeah, sure. It was my holiday and while, yes, I work at a Catholic Channel, it’s often difficult for me to give up a Jewish holiday. But it’s what I do; it’s my job. So I was doing it. But when I watched the event on TV where the pope visited the Synagogue on Shabbat, on Friday night, I felt like I was caught up in part of it. I thought that was great. I listened to his remarks afterwards and then even after Shabbat and getting home later that night at eleven-thirty at night, he went into his residence where he was staying with the Secret Service, passing through all these people who were standing on the street just to get a glimpse of him, and rather than going off to bed, he told the Secret Service, ‘No, no. I want to go back outside and shake the hands of all of these people.’ And I just thought that was really cool. I thought he’s really become human to a lot of people here. Calling someone ‘The Vicar of Christ’ is a pretty big pedestal to put someone on and we might not have looked at him as such a human being as he has now shown himself. He really is a warm person who stood up in Synagogue on Friday night and said ‘shalom’ and ‘Happy Pesach’ on behalf of the Catholic Church. I thought that was a really incredible move. Sundown at the youth rally on Saturday was the start of Pesach—the beginning of Passover—it was really cool for me to watch the sun go down at the rally and I felt like I was sort of celebrating Passover with the Pope. So it really turned the whole event for me.

BH: It’s funny you mention that because one of the more moving parts of the trip to me was watching his visit to the Synagogue on television. After the Pope left the Synagogue, the camera lingered inside and I saw these little grandkids running up to their grandfathers or fathers at the Synagogue and jumping in their arms, really excited that the Pope had visited them. I found it very moving that these kids from a different faith tradition were so excited that the Pope had come.

RG: Yeah, I saw a clip afterwards of two Bar Mitzvah-aged boys standing outside the Synagogue and they got a chance to shake his hand. And they were so excited; you could just tell they were beaming with excitement. It’s funny because on “The Busted Halo Show” we’ve been asking people for weeks, ‘if you had the opportunity to meet the Pope, what would you say?’ And they asked the younger of the two boys ‘well what did you say to him?’ And this young boy said, ‘I said to him, “shalom” and he said “shalom” back!’; you know, the kid was just so excited! I was just really moved by that; I was like, that’s just great. He was reaching out and touching hands not just of the youth of the Catholic faith, but also that of the Jewish faith. And I thought that was great, especially at Passover. What greater time to bring that unity together? Passover is a time of talking about freedom, and I think that that’s really his message too, is freedom from a lot of things. For him to go share a Shabbat service at a Synagogue with a Holocaust-survivor rabbi; I feel like that speaks volumes.

Check out more at the link. Very cool stuff, very cool.