An Aperol Spritz and a Catholic Mass in Rome the Day After Pope Francis’ Funeral

I have long forsaken my religious upbringing, but an Italian mass the day after the Papal funeral? It’s like Italy’s Mayhem Ball.

By Alyssa Mercante | May 12, 2025 | 9:31am

Photo: iStockphoto In Depth

An Aperol Spritz and a Catholic Mass in Rome the Day After Pope Francis’ Funeral

It’s April 26, and the car that picked me up from Fiumicino Airport is careening down Rome’s narrow, cobblestoned streets, barely missing tourists. The driver (wearing one pair of eyeglasses on his forehead and another on the bridge of his nose) realized I speak the language, and is chatting rapidly in Italian about the recent death of Pope Francis while maneuvering the car like he’s in a Roman version of The Fast and the Furious.

“Dovrei accendere un fuoco per il fumo,” he jokes, suggesting he’s going to light a fire to mimic the smoke that pours from the Vatican after a new pope is selected. It’s the day after the papal funeral and weeks before the conclave (he pronounces it “con-clahv-ay”), but he’s frustrated by how many people are here in the Eternal City. (Tens of thousands flocked to Rome for the papal funeral, while hundreds of thousands of tourists traveled for the May 8 conclave).

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He stops short at a traffic circle. Massive mobs stand in front of the Basilica Papale Santa Maria Maggiore (a Catholic Church of special importance and with special privileges as determined by the pope), flanked by news trucks and military vehicles. Police officers direct pedestrians, urging them to cross rather than linger in the middle of the street to gawk at the spire. Other people in more intense-looking military gear shoo tourists away from restricted areas. A group of teens wearing kelly green vests trail behind a short woman carrying a pole with a flag and an Italian woman waves her hand in frustration. It seems like all the Romans, not just my driver, want to hurry this papal process up.

Despite the chaos, there’s a bubble of respect. I was hoping to get some sort of bootleg papal funeral shirt like you’d get in the parking lot after a concert, but there are no stalls selling schlock. Throughout my entire trip, I only saw a handful of pope-related wares, and they were just t-shirts printed with a picture of Papa Francisco smiling and waving, or painted magnets of his visage. No ’90s-style collage tees or bad photoshops of him in heaven.

Pope Francis died on April 21 after suffering a stroke (and meeting JD Vance). He became pope in 2013, after Pope Benedict XVI resigned due to health issues (the first papal resignation since 1415). He was considered one of the most socially conscious popes of all time, thanks to his determination to reform and modernize the Catholic Church. As far as popes during my lifetime go, I’d rank him first. One of his final acts was ensuring that the “popemobile” would become a health clinic for the children of Gaza.

I was raised Roman Catholic in an Italian American household in Long Island, New York, which meant religion classes, communion, confirmation, and eventual abject horror at my recent divorce. I remember the 2005 death of Pope John Paul II all too well—it was my 15th birthday, and my mother spent it sobbing fat, milky tears at the Apple store. (I was getting my first iPod and didn’t care about anything else). A set of four collectible plates commemorating Pope John Paul II, his face hand-painted on each, still hangs in my parents’ kitchen.

So I have a unique relationship to all of the pageantry going on here; I’ve also never been in this city, or abroad, on my own (I’m here to see a video game preview). But after the year I’ve had (harassment, career change, breakup, new apartment, health scare), it’s a chance to be re-baptized as an Italian woman, and to don my best Catholic drag for a few days. There’s an air of importance hovering over Italy, and I’m hoping it’ll change me for the better.

My driver successfully delivered me to my hotel near Stazione Termini, the city’s main railway station and the biggest in the country. I round a corner and flatten myself against the wall to let a towheaded family of tourists schlepping their luggage pass by, but quickly realize something is up. A fourth man is following right behind the family’s patriarch, his arm outstretched, his hand shaped into a claw, his fingertips dipping below the line of the tourist’s back pocket. The “attenzione pickpocket” TikTok is happening before my eyes.

“Ay!” I shout to deter the man. He stops short, withdraws his hand, turns to face me, and stomps his feet in frustration, letting loose a slew of what I can only imagine are curses. (He’s not speaking Italian). The trio of tourists continues walking, oblivious. I shrug and about-face, trudging towards the bus that will take me to my destination, a pickpocket thwarted with absolutely no fanfare.

The bus takes me to Trastevere, which becomes my favorite neighborhood in Rome—it’s not as central and therefore not as overrun with tourists, so it’s great for thrifting and getting a quick, cheap Aperol Spritz. But it’s early on a Sunday morning, and the street vendors are still setting up their stalls, so I walk towards what I later learn is the Basilica di San Crisogono.

I have long forsaken my religious upbringing, but I can’t resist the gaudy allure of a Catholic church—the gilded statues, the marble columns with their spider veins of mineral impurities, the giant frescoes depicting all kinds of horrors, the fake flames of prayer candles lined up in front of a bereft Virgin Mary or a cherubic baby Jesus—it’s all so dramatic. It calls to me.

As I walk up to the church vestibule, I hear the dulcet, amplified tones of what must be the priest and balk. I haven’t sat through a mass that wasn’t for a wedding or a funeral in over a decade, and hated them long before I realized organized religion is a sham. But an Italian mass the day after the papal funeral? It’s like Italy’s Mayhem Ball.

I walk in and slide into a pew near the back, shocked at the size of the space in relation to its small seating area. There are only about 40 to 50 pews, and even fewer people in them. I look around for a program, but they’re all taken. A woman turns and wordlessly hands me hers. “Grazie,” I whisper. “Prego,” she smiles.

Though my Italian is passable, I can’t follow the service at all—like any good Catholic priest, this one is a mumbler, and the cacophonous echo of his voice through the speakers makes it impossible for me to pick out more than a few words. I skim the program instead, noting sections dedicated to Pope Francis and one to Carlo Acutis, the young man people call the “gamer saint,” who was set to be canonized this week before the passing of Francis.

When the time comes for us to offer each other peace, I recognize the gesture and mumble an approximation of the words those near me are sharing with each other. I remember, sharply, how during this process in my childhood, my younger sister and I would get in trouble for gripping each other’s hands so hard we’d whimper in pain, each daring the other to let go first.

Then, it’s the communion rite. The people in front of me begin walking dutifully to the front, where the priest, his thick black caterpillar eyebrows starkly contrasting his all-white ensemble, stands holding the gold ciborium housing the tiny little bodies of Christ. I panic, wondering if I am allowed to take communion, forgetting the rules entirely, looking around for an answer I’ll never find.

My stomach grumbles. I step in line and fashion my hands into a cup. I clock his gnarled knuckles and slightly overgrown nails and, for a brief moment, I fear he’ll try and put the wafer directly in my mouth. Thankfully, he places it in my outstretched palm and softly says his prayer. I hear “corpo” (“body”) and mumble an “amen” back in English. Oops.

I walk back and kneel at my pew. What do I pray for? I’d like a full-time job; my gramps back from the dead; and the end of a year-plus-long harassment campaign against me for daring to be a woman in gaming. Also: a ceasefire in Gaza and an entirely free Palestine; the sudden demise of the Trump administration and a rollback of all its policies; and for every rescue animal to get adopted.

The wafer turns to mush in my mouth, and a tear falls down my face. This is weird. It’s not a religious tear, but one of overwhelming emotion, perhaps even a little relief.

The service ends, and I rush to a side door. I look left, then right, trying to get my bearings, and see the awning for a place called The Long Island Night Cafe right next to me. “€7 Aperol Spritz,” a sign on the cobblestones boasts. I pull a chair directly into the sun, neatly fold up the program to bring home to my mother, and shut my eyes.

A few days later, moving into my new apartment, I feel like I’ve started a new chapter. I prop my Gramps’ prayer card against my Sicilian pigna and look out onto my new street. Somewhere, across the world, white smoke spews from the chimney of the Vatican.

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