SFONDI MICHELA CESCON

that he liked the people in Iowa best, bseuace they were so reverent and attentive. We were very proud!I think a lot of people here are not quite seeing that what the JPII did on his trips to countries like Africa and other Third World places was done with due regard to differing cultures and ways of worship. Some sort of dance is indeed permitted in the liturgical norms when it is part of an indigenous people's traditional approach to worship. Both the pope and Marini would have done things with this in mind. A lot of these liturgies were undoubtedly planned by the people at the local level (just as they are here in the U.S.) and it is rather **** to criticize what is done without coming across to the people as a kind of cultural imperialist. So the liturgies in these circumstances are given more leeway. Obviously this is going to lead sometimes to what we Westerners consider a lack of decorum, but JPII was able to take this the spirit in which it was intended, and he could enter into those celebrations, as we all saw many times. When Pope Benedict was in Africa, I suspect he saw a lot in the liturgy he was not accustomed to, but didn't throw a fit about it; he encountered a few things at the papal liturgies in the U.S. that perhaps weren't his personal preferences, but nevertheles entered into the spirit of the occasion and tried to lead the people by his own devotion (at least that was my impression). Things are a bit different in Rome and at home in the Vatican, where he is more directly in charge of the liturgy, and where he can more freely lay down the law. But his guiding principle, and that of JPII seems to be to be a sensible one: The Sabbath [li