Packed Your Bags Yet?

The Vatican is holding a, um, conference (is that the right word?) for bloggers. Well, 150 of the chosen, anyway. The original link reference I saw was in Italian. My Italian is pretty much limited to what occurs in Verdi and Donizetti. And not all that much of that. But here it is in English, courtesy of Fr Finnegan.

Even if I could afford it, I imagine my chances of being among the select are right up there with my chances of winning the gold at the Northern Meeting. But my (and your) chances ought to be better at this one:

The *Other* Rome Blognic.

Still can't afford it, but it's nice to be welcome.

By the way, I don't know for sure what a blognic is either but from the description it sounds like a good thing. I must have been isolated in my --ahem-- Catholic ghetto when that one was coined. And while we're philologizing, in the Italian language page there is a little illustration bearing some of the only English words: "Vatican Meeting". But the Italian begins Un incontro di bloggers. Incontro? Is that our old friend in English, the encounter group? Should I be afraid?

[Addendum: A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. No, not an encounter group. I went digging through the stacks and found my old Harper Collins Italian dictionary, which I bought when I was going to teach myself to converse with my friend Carlo in Italian. It seems incontro just means meeting. Although, it can mean meeting as in a football match, which adds yet another interesting coloration to the whole thing.]