PHILADELPHIA >> Jean Martinelli stood in the Grand Hall of the Philadelphia Convention Center Wednesday with a paintbrush in her hand, 760 miles away from home, hopeful to find a purpose, a new direction, having come to the World Meeting of Families with three close friends.
“I better not pass this up,” she said with some orange dabbed on the end of her brush. “And, my husband, who died, tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Go with Barb. Go with Barb.’ So, here I am.”
Martinelli, her friend Barb Perri and thousands of others are hoping to break the Guinness Book of World Records by painting a portion of a mural being created to commemorate the World Meeting of Families and Pope Francis’ visit.
According to Donna Crilley Farrell, executive director of the World Meeting of Families, the world record for the largest number of people painting a mural stands at 2,263.
However, with the mural designed by Cesar Viveros in a paint-by-number sketch, individuals have been working on the artwork since June at locations such as Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Divine Providence Village Day Services Program in Secane and St. Malachy School in North Philadelphia, where the 4,239-square-feet piece will be permanently installed in November.
During the World Meeting of Families at the convention center, panels of the mural are located in the Grand Hall so that people such as Sister Christene Papavero of San Jose, California, can unleash their inner artist.
“Oh my God!” she exclaimed in between her flourishes with the brush colored in cream-colored paint. “How could you not? This is wonderful. It’s just an awesome experience to be here with all the families from all over.”
It would be even a little more enchanting were she just lucky enough to come face-to-face with the Holy Father.
“I want to touch his face, but I doubt it’ll happen,” Sister Christene Papavero said. “I actually want to give him a kiss on both cheeks.”
But, no matter what, the experience from being in Philadelphia during the Pope’s visit to adding some color to the mural is something she’ll hold in her heart forever.
“It’s historic,” she said. “The whole week here is historic and this is historic. It’s all connected. It’s connected and it’s unifying.”
For Martinelli, the pilgrimage is even something more.
She and her friends, Perri, Margaret Boismier and Ana Elder arrived Tuesday following a 15-hour van ride. Boismier explained they prepared by studying World Meeting of Families literature for eight weeks prior to the event.
“I never stayed in a hotel for seven nights,” Martinelli said. “My husband would have totally said no. We would’ve been in a tent here.”
As Perri lovingly dubbed him “Nature Boy,” Martinelli said her husband focused passionately on reducing his carbon footprint, something she now tries to find a way to do.
“He tried to save the planet,” she said. “I honor him by refusing to take a plastic bag at a store and every time I refuse, I tell the story. I try to honor him that way, he was an environmentalist.”
She still grapples with the loss of her husband last year.
“We were married quite old,” the proud Irish Catholic from the O’Connell clan said. “(Larry) was 46 and I was 45. God blessed us with a baby girl … He didn’t make it to her graduation.”
Martinelli, from North Muskegon, Michigan, paused pulling out a picture of her teenaged daughter, Lisa Katherine. She began to cry as she shared what she hopes to find from having come on this journey.
“I just want to grieve,” she said in between her tears. “What is my mission now that I’m not married? I’ve just been married so long. I have an 18-year-old daughter. We miss her dad.”
She recalled this past Memorial Day weekend, on what would have been their 31st anniversary.
“I rented a cruise ship and 100 people went out and scattered his ashes,” Martinelli said. “They came from all over the country, my relatives and friends. They really honored my husband.”
Now, she continues to do the same, following the path she believes he’d want her to go.
“He became Catholic in 2014 not even six months before he passed and she,” Martinelli said, pointing to her friend Perri, who’s a pastoral associate at Prince of Peace Church in Michigan, “worked on him for six years. They had a conversation for six years.”
Somehow, in that time, Perri worked her magic and now, Martinelli plans to follow the leadership of her friend who led her husband to faith.
“He’d say, ‘Stick with Barb,'” Martinelli said her husband would say in support of her mission to see the pope. “‘She’d lead you on the right path.'”
