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The scenes inside and outside St. Peter's in Rome during the passing of Pope John-Paul II and the election of his successor, Pope Benedict XVI, sent me searching my letter-archive for a well-remembered occasion on December 24, 1944. I reproduce it in full, and unedited:

'26 December 1944: My dearest Minna. What sort of a Christmas did I have? Well, on the whole quite passable though you will hardly think so from the first part of this letter. As I told you I maintained my intention to hear Midnight Mass in St. Peter's and accordingly arrived there at about ten o'clock to find the whole immense forecourt alive with people - Americans, British, Italians - a really mixed crowd. Shortly after my arrival the barriers were removed and we all surged forward up the steps to the church. There appeared to be no semblance of organisation and thousands of soldiers (I among them) were whirled into the centre aisle which was blocked off from the rest of the building by shoulder-high wooden barriers. Here we were slowly pressed together for about half an hour until an American chaplain, a couple of henchmen and broadcast directives from a loudspeaker high in the roof, began the task of clearing the centre aisle - we shouldn't have been there at all!

'After some considerable effort, I found myself in the main transept on the left hand side of the church and succeeded in obtaining a good view of the main altar. But before long it became apparent that thousands of people were still packing in and soon it was difficult to move at all. Looking round me (it is sometimes a benefit to be six feet three inches) I saw a truly amazing sight. Every side-altar bore a mixed festoon of soldiers and civilians balancing themselves precariously amid the brazen candle-sticks; confessional boxes as points of vantage were not long overlooked and the roofs were soon crowded to capacity. People swarmed up the statues and sat perched on a gigantic shoulder or head; others clung to the wrought-iron gates of the various chapels.

'Still more of the faithful came pouring in and I was surprised and shocked to see quite tiny children involved in this disgusting melee. Every few moments a file of young monks would come barging through the press, regardless of anyone and I made myself a promise that if one of these young ruffians came anywhere within reach of the toe of my boot he would realise the fact.

'By this time people were fainting right and left and were in active danger of being trampled since no-one appeared to have sufficient initiative to pick them up and pass them over the heads of the crowd. After a little while, however, one chapel was turned into a sort of casualty clearing station and here the sick and the more incapably drunk were gathered in. Everyone was, of course, chattering and laughing, but through the din one could faintly hear a choir (it sounded literally a mile or two away) and this was later joined by the organ but this too was barely audible above the uproar.

'At this moment a flourish of trumpets announced that 'Il Papa' had arrived and this was the signal for a storm of clapping and cheering. The immense crowd (I believe there were more than 100,000 persons present) went wild with an excitement similar to that which used to be reserved for Il Duce. Far away, over the sea of heads, a tiny white figure was bobbing up and down in a chair carried by four bearers. As he approached the altar so did the applause grow wilder and the people attempt to press forward. There came a vast surge in the crowd as people lost their footing and cannoned into their neighbours who, in turn, passed on the shock until hundreds of people were swaying and shouting. There were women screaming wildly and I began to wish myself well out of the place.

'Here and there one could see the red cockades of the carabinieri and the helmets of the Swiss Guard rising above the ruck but they appeared to have no control whatsoever. Just about this time I decided that I had had about enough of it and after a really dreadful half-hour of struggle I succeeded in making my way back to the main door. If I had followed the examples of others who were also trying to make their way out by using their shoulders and feet indiscriminately I might have arrived sooner - but in any case the effort had been wasted. I went through the door and out into the portico only to find that the iron gates giving out on to the steps had been bolted. The crowd in the portico was, if anything, more tightly packed than in the church.

'I caught a glimpse of the outside world beyond this gate and realised that if there were 100,000 within the church there could not be far fewer than 50,000 outside it and that the authorities did not dare to open the gates. But the crowd began to get rather more ugly after a further hour had passed and then the most stupid thing of the whole evening occurred. They opened ONE gate an aperture of not more than six feet and this gave on to a long flight of steps! You can imagine the result - there was a general mad rush and I found myself within an ace of being flattened against one of the pillars.

'Women were screaming frantically and holding their children high above their heads. I was very glad to see that a few British soldiers did manage to group together and turn to face the crowd thus restraining some of the more ebullient Italian males and creating a temporary lane down which some of the more exhausted women could make their way out in safety. I won free myself at about a quarter to two and made my way to the car park feeling as if I had been beaten with sticks. I can say, on sober reflection, that it was one of the most disgusting functions at which I have ever had the misfortune to assist.

'Granted that I was a mere sightseer and granted that probably about ten thousand others were also mere sightseers I am at a loss to understand the attitude of the majority to what is, after all, one of their most solemn religious festivals. Reverence could not have been more conspicuously absent, the behaviour of the people being more like what one might expect at a bull-fight than in a church. Apart from the drunk and disorderly section several couples were seizing the opportunity afforded by the press of the crowd to do a little courting! I was glad to think that I had gone there as an agnostic rubberneck - if I had gone in a spirit of religious fervour, expecting some mystic revelation from such a solemn ceremony in the heart of Christendom and conducted by the Holy Father himself, I think I might have wept.

'Our English Catholics can have but little conception of their religion as it is practised here at its seat - Geoffrey [a Catholic friend of my wife's] had he been with me would have been shocked to see that the clerics in the crowd were perhaps the biggest hooligans of them al. You can imagine that I was deeply grateful for once, since I left home, that you were not with me.‘

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