While the photographs are quite popular, it is thePopemobile that proved to be a real crowd drawer, with people taking photographs and posing beside the 16-year-old car. It will be shown in different churches in Bulacan province until May 15.
Some pilgrims touch the vehicle, hoping to be cured of illnesses or wishing for good things to happen to them. Others meditate or offer prayers before it.
“I can still recall how I felt when I first saw this vehicle with the pope inside it in 1995. It’s the same feeling now, my hair is rising again,” said Christian Natividad, the 32-year-old mayor of the city.
Natividad said he was only 16 when Blessed John Paul visited Manila in 1995. He was one of the more than five million people who participated in that historic event.
Natividad said he still could not explain why the hair on his arms rose upon seeing the Popemobile. “It’s like reliving the past. It’s like he is on the Popemobile again.”
The mayor prayed that God might use him as an instrument of development and change in Bulacan’s capital city.
“I believe God will answer my prayers again like when I was 16,” he said.
Father Jay Lina, head of the Commission on Cultural Heritage Preservation of the Diocese of Malolos, said the Popemobile is part of their surprise for the exhibit.
“We planned to have the relics and photo exhibit, but we thought of the Popemobile because its maker was born in this province,” said Father Lina.
The custom-built Popemobile has a 250hp Mazda engine, six wheels, footplates for the Swiss Royal Guard, and four-inch thick glass that served as a protective shield for the pope.
The bulletproof glass, however, has been removed and replaced by plate glass that partly cracked.
http://www.ucanews.com/2011/05/03/john-paul%E2%80%99s-%E2%80%98popemobile%E2%80%99-draws-pilgrims/
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