David Sedaris Meets the Pope

Does that make me an agnostic or a flat-out atheist? I do believe there was someone named Jesus who was a revolutionary, but I don’t think he was God’s son, or that he was resurrected. It was a shame that I was invited to the Vatican, actually—like sending me to the U.S. Open when I’ve never watched a football game in my life. I thought of the millions of people in the world who’d give anything to meet the Pope and realized that I knew only two of them: my friend Ewan’s cleaning lady and Stephen Colbert, who’s so Catholic he taught Sunday school.

The dress code on the invitation was daytime formal, which I was told amounted to shined shoes and a suit. The only one I had at my fingertips was bought nine years earlier, when I was invited to Buckingham Palace. The late Queen hosted tea parties every summer for do-gooders of one stripe or another, and I was included on account of all the rubbish I’d collected by the sides of British roads. She and I didn’t meet, but I saw her—she was standing within hearing range, close enough for me to comprehend how truly tiny she was. Her feet were the size of hot-dog buns. We’d been told to leave our phones and cameras at home, but everyone around me had snuck one in, and they were all going bananas.

Me, I’m just not a picture person. Am I glad other people have cameras? Sometimes. Like at the dinner Stephen Colbert arranged the night before our papal audience. I look at the photos of the assembled guests and wonder, What was I doing there? Why not Garrison Keillor, Tina Fey, or Donald Glover, to name just three of a thousand more qualified people? It was like a reproduction of “The Last Supper” with one of the disciples replaced by Snoopy.

“Does anyone have a favorite God joke?” Colbert asked as our final course was served. “It doesn’t have to be your own.”

For most of the evening, I’d sat across from Whoopi Goldberg, who had no appetite and passed me all her plates after just a bite or two. That meant double servings of four separate pasta dishes, two steaks served on rafts of eggplant, four rich smothered dumplings, two tomato salads, and two cherry-and-goat-cheese pavlovas, plus all the food I snatched from the plate of Jim Gaffigan’s youngest son, who was seated to my right. Now my pants no longer fit, and my watchband was cutting off the circulation in my left hand. Even my throat was swollen. I cleared it before taking the floor.

“So God tells Adam, ‘I’m going to make you a wife, a helpmate, the most beautiful woman who ever lived. She’ll be terrific in bed, enthusiastic, and uncomplaining. But it’ll cost you.’

“Adam asks, ‘How much?’

“ ‘An eye, an elbow, a collarbone, and your left ball.’

“Adam thinks for a minute, then asks, ‘What can I get for a rib?’ ”

The polite but underwhelming response I got from people who tell jokes for a living—who fill stadiums—should have taught me a lesson. Instead, I told another one.

“What’s the worst part of having sex with Jesus?

“He’s always wanting to come into your heart.”

Thank God Colbert told a joke as well. It was, he warned us, decades old, and one of the first he ever wrote. But at least he wrote it. Mine were ones people had told me at book signings. I don’t belong here, I thought, embarrassed, for the umpteenth time that evening.

Usually, I comfort myself by remembering that everyone secretly feels out of place. Here, though, I’m pretty sure it was just me. That said, my fellow-guests were welcoming and, it goes without saying, terribly, terribly funny, just as they were at six-forty-five the following morning, when we met at an entrance gate near the Pope’s living quarters and were led to a magnificently frescoed room in the Apostolic Palace. There, we joined the hundred other people who’d been invited: more international writers and comics, most of them from Italy. I knew only one, a woman named Luciana Littizzetto, whom I’d met years earlier, in Turin. She was the only non-Vatican representative to address the crowd that morning. Her remarks lasted a minute or two and were in Italian, as were the Pope’s.

The assembled group stood and applauded as he entered the room and took his thronelike seat before us. It speaks to the man’s humility that he allows every rank-and-file clergy member to outdress him. The cardinals were resplendent in their black cassocks, which had bright-scarlet buttons and a matching sash called a fascia. Better still were the Papal Gentlemen, who wore morning coats and white bow ties coupled with elaborate bibs, often with medals hanging off them. The Swiss Guard looked like Renaissance-era toy soldiers in their multicolored striped outfits, standing just so with feathers in their helmets, their halberds held before them. Even the friars in their dung-colored robes and sandals were more strikingly dressed than the Pope, who looked a bit mother-of-the-bride in a white cassock with a shawl-type thing over his shoulders. He wore a skullcap and, around his neck, a cross on which you could have crucified the late Queen of England.

The Pope read a prepared statement of which we were each given a copy. It amounted to: laughter makes the world go round. His voice was soft and passionless. At one point, he got a reaction by sticking a thumb above his ear and wagging his fingers, but, as one member of the American delegation said afterward, “we really just laughed out of politeness.”

The part that moved me took place after his address, when, row by row, we were led up the aisle and personally greeted. The Pope remained seated and shook each of our hands. Some people brought him gifts; others leaned in to tell him something. I think I said, “Thanks for having me.” Standing before him, I felt the same pity I’d felt for the Queen and would feel for anyone who has to meet people for a living. Nothing stirred inside me the way that it did in 2src15, when, rounding a corner at the White House, where I’d been invited to talk with some speechwriters, I happened upon President Obama. For a moment, standing there with my mouth hanging open, I feared that I might spontaneously combust—with respect, with pride and awe. The encounter with the Pope, though, was like meeting the Dalai Lama: not an inconvenience by any stretch, not uninteresting, just “Oh, hi.”

Many people, after the handshake, walked a few steps, pulled out their phones, and then took a selfie with the Pope in the background. It was so tacky. I said to the Italian seated to my right, “You’d think he was Santa!”

As at any good fashion show, the majority of our time was spent waiting, but the clothes we saw made it all worthwhile. The difference, I thought, was that these outfits weren’t for sale. Then my friend Austin wrote from the States and told me that while in Rome I had to go to Gammarelli, a bespoke tailoring business, founded in 1798, that’s been dressing the Pope and his associates for generations. It wasn’t too far from my hotel, so late in the afternoon I went with Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who wore great clothes and was seemingly up for anything. I’d worried on the walk over that Gammarelli wouldn’t sell to laymen. “I’m going to tell them that my brother is a priest,” I said to her, “that he’s my same size, and I thought this might make for a good Christmas present.”

I figured they must hear that a lot, though, so when the time came I told the salesman, who was young and slender and spoke very good English, that I collect religious garments from around the world.

“He’s actually a noted historian,” Julia said.

I looked at her, like, Fuck. If I wanted to be put on the spot like this, I’d have come with my sister Amy.

“I also study history,” the young man said. “What is your area of concentration?”

I panicked. “Sometimes I write for magazines,” I told him.

What I wanted was a black cassock. That’s the ankle-length robe Catholic priests wear. I wanted one because they’re slimming, they’re classic, and they’re beautifully made, at least at Gammarelli.

“We start by choosing the wool,” the young man said, handing me a book of fabric samples. “Then we select the buttons and take your measurements.”

A Gammarelli cassock generally takes months to make and involves several fittings. The price, which is steep, reflects the high quality of work that goes into it. That said, it’s not as involved as a bespoke suit—there are no pants to worry about, no zippers in this case—but it is intricately pleated and lined. I was still willing to go ahead with it and was being measured when the young man left the dressing room and returned with a cassock that was already finished but had never been collected. Perhaps the priest who ordered it had died, or had been sent to prison. Whatever the case, it fit me very well except for the length, which could easily be adjusted.

Next came the Roman collar. The outfit’s fine without it, I thought, until I added it and realized, Whoa, you really need the collar. Then came the fascia, and I got two—the classic black one and a scarlet model that a cardinal would wear.

“Is it against the law to dress like a priest?” I whispered to Julia as I did up the last of the thirty-three buttons, each of which symbolizes a year of Jesus’ life and leaves you wishing he’d been crucified at twelve, especially if, like me, you’re developing arthritis in your fingers.

I loved the idea of wearing my cassock on the street. Then I imagined myself walking along and being approached by a person in distress or, worse yet, by another priest asking me if I’d heard the news about Father O’Shea or Archbishop DiMaggio. “A cardiac arrest, not two minutes into the Eucharist!” What does one say in that situation?