Pious Hands
Karyn Planett
Trujillo, Peru 2009
There were hundreds of them. Priests and monks, nuns and the humble faithful, all gathered to celebrate something in the Catedral de Trujillo. But what?
I wormed my way into a good vantage point, smiling and inching forward, remembering that I was a mere observer, the others there for a real reason. For the next two hours we bowed and prayed, struggled and sang in ragged Spanish to discover we had stumbled into a ceremony for Peruvian cardinals. And I swear, they played Simon and Garfunkel’s “Sounds of Silence.”