“You must have a glamorous job,” quipped cameraman Mal James to me on Friday night as we were breaking down after Pope Benedict’s Way of the Cross at the Colosseum.

It was pouring rain, freezing, and there we were, rolling up cables and packing up lights. No, not exactly glamorous. It is an interesting job, I have to admit, but a lot of times the conditions can be pretty miserable.

Today it was more of the same. We did a first live shot just as the Pope was giving his Easter greetings, at 7 a.m. Eastern, or noon Rome time. Mal, producer Mario Biasetti and I were huddled under a tent, but it wasn’t much protection, either for us or the equipment. There was plenty of thunder and lightning, and loads of rain and enough wind to get us all wet and miserable. Glamorous indeed. After the live shot we just high-tailed it into the office.

Despite the weather, there were still tens of thousands of people in St. Peter’s Square for the Mass and Blessing today. If you’ve come all the way from the United States or from Latin America — as many of the pilgrims have — a little or even a lot of rain is not going to stop you from going to see the Pope. Not exactly the weather for an Easter Egg hunt, but you don’t make a pilgrimage to Rome for that.

Finally, the Pope gave us a little bit of news overnight. Italy’s best known Muslim, an Egyptian-born journalist named Magdi Allam, was baptized at the Easter Vigil in St. Peter’s Basilica.

I have a feeling the powers that be at the Vatican didn’t think too much about what the repercussions of this could be. Allam, an outspoken critic of Muslim extremists, and a vocal supporter of Israel, writes for the Milan daily Corriere della Sera. He was a controversial figure to begin with, and this will only add to his notoriety. As some Muslims here pointed out, Allam could have easily been baptized quietly in a small parish near his home, and not made a big deal of it. But he, and apparently the Vatican, decided otherwise. All this high-profile attention, including two full pages of stories about the conversion in his own newspaper, will only anger Muslims even more. And it’s all happening just when relations between the Vatican and Muslims looked like they were getting better. So much for that. It’s really a kind of in-your-face move, on the part of both Allam and the Vatican, and I’m sure we haven’t heard the end of it.