confession

In the spring of 1999, during my self-declared sabbatical year at the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset in Madrid, Spain, a devoutly Catholic friend of mine invited me to Easter Mass at the Vatican in Rome, presided over by the highest official of the Catholic Church, the pope.
 
Something like that I simply could not refuse: a pilgrimage that thousands made each year, whether out of sincere devotion to their faith or as the perfect excuse to enjoy all of the flavors of one of the world's most ancient cities.  I flew to Rome and stood with my friend for several hours on my feet in the warm April sun in the piazza of St. Peter's basilica.  And in the course of those few hours, my entire sense and understanding of what Catholicism meant, changed.  All of my reading, all of the conversations with Catholics, all of my travels, fermented in the hot Roman sun into a single, uniterrupted stream of thought.
 
This was the wine that galvanized the short story "Confession."