REVELATION-final1

DAY 5(Wednesday, 23 April 2014)POLICE CONFRONTATIONWith only a couple of hundred dollars in the pocket and no income source it will be impossibleto survive for long in Rome, which is one of the world’s most expensive cities. To secure fundsI have to do something and do it fast. The obvious thing to do is tell people of my predicamentand ask for help, so I spend the morning drafting the text of an appel to donors and the rest of theday shooting it in stages on the grounds of St. Peter’s Square.Just before noon our filming session is interrupted by a police cruiser. The cops tell us to stopfilming on St. Peter’s Square without permission. I point out that everyone is filming orphotographing on the square and that none of these tourists have permission. The cops said wehave professional equipment and that we need press passes to film with professional equipment.I explained that our equipment is run of the mill and certainly not professional and that we arejust tourists trying to shoot a non-commercial video for our own use and not accreditedjournalists working for a network but they would have none of it and asked us to stop filming orleave the square. We stopped filming and moved on to avoid confrontation.Late afternoon we returned to the square to resume filming our appeal to donors. Within minutesanother police cruisers appeared and we were told to stop because no one is allowed to film inthe square after 6 PM. The pretext to prohibit filming had changed but I was not going to arguewith the cops so we stopped filming and moved to the edge of the square where we resumed ourwork. But once again the cruiser showed up and ordered us to stop filming despite being on theedge of the square. The cops became abusive and insulted Nick and I in Italian not knowing thatI speak the language rather well.Unbeknown to us the entire incident was being filmed and broadcast life via satellite by aMexican film crew, which also interviewed me once we were thrown out of the square by theRoman police. We subsequently received a copy of the report they produced and we posted it onYou Tube along our own video footage of the incident.Rather angered by the abuse we suffered, Nick and I resolved to go to the Vatican Press Officethe next day and lodge a formal complaint against the police.It was an exhausting day.29