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Nephews offer a kid's-eye view
by The Michigan Catholic
Published July 3, 2009
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Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic
Garrett Vigneron, 11, interviews his Uncle Al, Archbishop Allen Vigneron, in the Vatican Gardens. |
DETROIT — Garrett and Griffin Vigneron, 11 and 10, nephews of Archbishop Allen Vigneron, offer a kid's-eye view of the Vatican and pallium celebration on their uncle's blog, A Shepherd's Mission. The two are sons of Gary and Kimberly Vigneron, members of St. Christopher Parish in Marysville. Armed with a camera and videorecorder they updated the blog and did their own interviews. A special television show of their work in the Vatican will air at a later date on CTND, the Catholic Television Network of Detroit.
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Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic
Griffin Vigneron, 10, tapes interview. |
Here are excerpts of their blog entries.
June 25: "Hi, we are Garrett and Griffin Vigneron, nephews of Archbishop Vigneron. Tomorrow we are leaving for Rome, but tonight we are busy packing. We thought we'd take a break to try our first blog post."
June 26: "We arrived! Our exciting adventure started with landing safely in Rome. After checking into the hotel we ate lunch. Boy, we sure miss American food already. We took a quick rest at our hotel and met Uncle Al and Fr. Tim Laboe for dinner near St. Peter's Square. The pizza in Italy is great, but it is different than American pizza. We thought the pizza was good, but the crust was as thin as a piece of paper!"
June 27: "One of the things we saw was a statue of the first Emporer of Rome, Julius Caesar, who is the person on the Little Caesar's commercial that says "Pizza, Pizza!" The statue of Julius Caesar was by his Forum which is close to the Colosseum.
"… After Mass, we went to dinner with the other pilgrims of the Archdiocese of Detroit. The dinner was delicious and our favorites were the pasta and the gelato (ice cream)."
June 28: "The apartment we ate lunch in was one floor away from where the pope lives. It was neat to see the apartment that Archbishop (James Michael) Harvey (prefecture of the papal household) lives in because many past popes lived in the same place (starting in the 15th century). We hoped to see the pope but we didn't. Instead, we asked Archbishop Harvey how many times he has met the pope and he said he sees him almost every day.
"In the afternoon we wandered around town, looked at some shops and bought some souveniers. We noticed after four or five shops that the merchandise was mostly the same. My Mom said it was all junk, but we liked it."
June 29: "The day we came here for finally arrived, when Uncle Al would receive his pallium from the pope. We can't believe how big St. Peter's is and how many people were there. It was packed! We had special seats near the front, but had a column from the altar that blocked our view of the pope. Garrett saw an usher and pointed to Uncle Al's name in the program book. Then he moved us up a couple of rows. The ceremony was longer than we thought, but it was worth it to see our uncle receive his pallium."
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