When a photographer approached and said that we could have a photo taken with both of the Eminent Italians, I jumped at the chance. For the first time in my life, I was speechless, stripped of the ability to communicate with anything other than my mesmerized eyes.
Fortunately, Scalia broke the ice by saying a few words in what I think was Sicilian and signed my copy of his book on constitutional interpretation (I thought about asking him to sign my hand, but on the off chance that I'd argue in front of him one day, decided to retain a shred of dignity.)
Dignity. A good word to describe Bevilacqua, who didn't really mingle with the crowd but was gracious if you wanted to kiss his ring. Which I did.
By this, I don't mean to say that the cardinal was haughty or unpleasant. Not knowing him personally, I couldn't describe his character among friends or in intimate moments with colleagues. It just seemed to me that this leader of the church in Philadelphia was a perfect example of gravitas and grandeur, an old-school prelate who probably preferred Gregorian chant to that regrettable creature of the '70s, the guitar Mass.
When I heard that Bevilacqua was suffering from dementia, and that they were demanding his presence at a deposition in the abuse scandal and possibly at trial, my first thought was: Thank God he's no longer in possession of his faculties. The man whom I saw at the Union League, proud and dignified in his Roman collar, would have been mortified to appear in public in a diminished state, like a sideshow.
Someone who had spent his adult life with reserve and who had avoided scandal like the plague, this would have been a particularly painful purgatory.
