Excerpt from my first book, “A European Odyssey; how a boxer’s daughter found grace”

Everyone felt the gravity of the announcement. The Pope was dying and I lived just minutes from the epicenter. History’s most well-traveled Pope and first non-Italian to hold the title of Bishop since the sixteenth century was allowing the Eternal City to unify the past and present. Italians won’t react unless they have to do it in a minute. They prefer to turn on a dime after reducing one another to tears. That’s how her non-residents are made to feel; it’s a right of passage. The locals have to experience it so why shouldn’t we? Yet they have the edge, weighed down by history and now it was unfolding in real time. It felt epic. I had to get in on the performance.