Pope, piano, cats!

Now if you read the story below about the pope and his piano, you’ll enjoy this one. For one thing, pope Benedict has an upright piano!! And it seems they did manage to get it into his apartment!

The Pope’s upright piano is now in his study, the room overlooking Saint Peter’s Square from the window of which he appears to deliver his Sunday blessing to pilgrims.

According to this though, the Pope’s kitties aren’t allowed inside the Vatican. I wonder where they are? But as the article says, other popes have managed to have pets so maybe Pope Benedict will get to keep his afterall!

Here is a very informative article about Pope Benedict and cats, cats in the church in general, and some of the saints and cats! Some excerpts:

Another story quotes Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, one of the Pope’s associates, as saying the Pope does talk to cats every time he runs into one, “sometimes for a long time.” He also says these loquacious cats end up trailing the Pope. Once 10 cats followed the Pope into the Vatican, he recalls.

According to Bertone, as the Pope walked into the Vatican with his feline disciples, one of the Swiss Guards had to intervene, saying: “Look, Your Eminence, the cats are invading the Holy See.”

Cats do make it into Christian folklore and art. One folk tale has the Virgin Mary asking animals in the stable if they could help put the newborn Jesus to sleep. None of the animals could help, but a gray tabby kitten, itself just born, was said to have climbed into the manager and purred Jesus to sleep. The Virgin Mary rewarded the tabby kitten by allowing all tabby kittens, from that day forth, to wear the letter “M” on their foreheads.

Apparently there are two patron saints for cats and cat lovers. One is St. Agatha, an early Christian virgin-martyr. Her connection with cats isn’t clear, except that she is said to appear in the form of a cat to punish women who don’t stop working on her feast day. Nope, she doesn’t sound too nice.

St. Gertrude of Nivelles comes through as kinder, a noblewoman who refused to marry and ended up as abbess of a convent. Again her life doesn’t seem to have anything to do with cats, but she was invoked during the bubonic plague and she’s sometimes depicted with rats. She’s also the patron saint of gardeners.

Hmmm there’s that gardening theme again …

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