The 6th Best Day Ever

Mass was over, and so was Coffee & Donuts afterward.

Most of our friends had already gone home, but my boys were happily playing in the parish courtyard (scaling the walls, quite literally, if I’m not mistaken), and my wife was catching up with a friend on a bench nearby.

So I, finding an empty bench in the late morning sun to finish what was left of my second cup of underrated church lady coffee, glance down at my phone and see a text message with this staring up at me:

I didn’t choke on the coffee, but it was close.

A few weeks ago, I had mailed a package to some new friends of The Popecast – who have known Pope Leo for many years – containing a Popecast mug, a card from my wife and I, and homemade pictures from our two oldest boys.

While I fully trusted that the pope’s friends would make every effort to get these small tokens to the Holy Father, I refused to let the picture form in my head of the text message I might eventually receive with a man dressed in white holding any one of those items, let alone all of them.

And yet, here it was.

Ironically, my first thought was, “No way he mastered AI this well and is just stringing me along, so this HAS to be real.”

I told my wife that this might just be the best day of my life, after our wedding day and the births of our four boys.

“So…the 6th best day of your life?” she said.

Yes, I’d say so.

At any rate, I share this with all of you because:

1. I suppose this counts as a (very, very small) piece of papal history, toward which this newsletter is, of course, aimed; and

2. Without all of you, faithful listeners of The Popecast and dear readers of Today in Papal History, this wild, surreal day would never have happened. And for that, my family and I are so very grateful.

So, thank you for listening and for reading!

Maybe one day we’ll have Pope Leo himself on the show…