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Yearly Archives: 2010
Not to be confused with the Netherworld
I have said this before, but it is hard to believe it has been an entire year already. One year ago, I was wrapping up at St. Brendan, still trying to work out visa issues and wondering if I would in fact get to Rome at all!
This morning, as I took my leave of the Eternal City for the summer it was already 30°C (85°F) by 10:00am. By all accounts it has been a relatively mild June, but it is already toasty enough for me. Arriving in Amsterdam a couple hours’ flight north of Rome, it was a much more reasonable 22°C (72°F).
The first thing I saw out the airplane window as we approached the airport was a windmill. Not one of the iconic Don Quixote sort, though, but a modern, white, high tech electricity producer. As for wooden clogs, I did not even have to leave the airport before I encountered a few!
Eveline, a good friend and Dutch theology student who had spent the year at the Lay Centre, was there to greet me and show me around Amsterdam before we left for her university town of Tilburg. This much further north, the days are noticeably longer – more like home. I knew to expect it, but you really cannot prepare for how many bicycles there are in this city! Everyone is on two wheels – kids, parents, professionals in suits/dresses, elderly folk out for a stroll. I can understand why fiets is basically the first Dutch word anyone would learn!
Before Amanda asks, yes, I got to the Van Gogh Museum, but it was closed. Saw the palace, the “new church” (from 1410), various canals, the flower market, Rembrant’s square, ate pannekochen (pancakes) for lunch and Irish pub fare for dinner. Also smelled marijuana wafting through the air at several points on our walk, I got hit on by a guy on a bike, and we overheard a tour guide address his group as they emerged from the red light district: “OK, let’s count everybody. I always lose one of the guys by this point… Hey, where’s Mike? Oh, Hi Mike! Your daughter told me I had to keep an eye on you since she could not come along today!”
Den Haag, Delft, Rotterdam, Maasdam, Tilburg and Den Bosch (with the just-retired Cardinal Kasper) are all on the agenda before heading for home.
Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul
It is appropriate that my last full day in Rome for this year should be the patronal feast of the city.
The idea of tourists coming to Rome to see the Pope is a modern phenomenon. For centuries, pilgrims came to Rome primarily to pray at the tombs of the two great martyr-saints who are honored as the “co-founders” of the Church of Rome, even though Christians were certainly present in the city before either Apostle arrived: Sts. Peter and Paul.
Relics of Sts. Peter and Paul above Papal Altar at San Giovanni Laterano
Throughout the Eternal City, you will see both saints together. On the Piazza in front of St. Peter’s Basilica, you see two giant statues, Peter on the left and Paul on the right. Atop the baldachino over the papal altar in Rome’s Cathedral-Basilica, St. John Lateran, two gold reliquaries house purported relics of each of the saints. The oldest known depiction of either saint is a depiction of both, at the catacombs of St. Thecla.
If you want to see the famous mosaics of the bishops of Rome, from Peter to Benedict, you go not to the Vatican Basilica, but to St. Paul’s Outside the Walls, which from the 4th to the 16th centuries was the largest church in Rome, until the new St. Peter’s was built. The “Successors of Peter” were honored at the Tomb of Paul. No wonder ecclesiologists point out the pope is better named “Successor of Peter and Paul” – if they are not too busy pointing out that neither Peter nor Paul were bishops of the city in the modern sense, but that is another debate.
Recently discovered images of Paul (left) and Peter (right), oldest known
Since the beginning of the dialogue between Orthodox and Catholic, one of the traditional signs of fraternity is the exchange of delegations on the feast days of the two Apostolic Sees. Rome sends a delegation to Constantinople on the Feast of St. Andrew, November 30, and Constantinople returns the delegation on the Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul. Metropolitan Gennadios of Sassima lead the group this year, and was the only person to receive the Sign of Peace from the Pope during the morning’s liturgy. In addressing the delegation, Pope Benedict spoke strongly and favorable of the progress toward unity being made in Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, and praised the Patriarch’s recent encyclical on ecumenism (a short read I strongly recommend to all). http://www.patriarchate.org/documents/sunday-orthodoxy-2010
Pallium Mass 2008 - Patriarch Bartholomew and Pope Benedict, the later wearing an adaptation of the pallium
This celebration also serves as the “Pallium Mass” when the (Catholic) Metropolitan Archbishops appointed within the last year come to Rome to receive the symbol of their office. Made from wool shorn of sheep blessed on the Feast of St. Agnes, the pallium is one of the oldest liturgical vestments, having changed size and function over the centuries but remaining in use throughout. The tradition of metropolitans coming to Rome to receive the pallium is recent, however, dating only from 1984. Prior to this they were vested in their own cathedral at the time of their installation as Metropolitan. However, it serves as a powerful symbol of the communion of the bishop of Rome with the archbishops throughout the world.
Metropolitan Gennaidos of Sassima, 2010 delegate of the Patriarch of Constantinople to Rome on the occassion of the Patronal Feast of Sts. Peter and Paul
The unity of the Church is the clear theme of the day– the pallium celebrating the existing full communion between Rome and the churches represented by the new metropolitan Archbishops, and the kiss of peace and exchange with the Orthodox delegation celebrating the impaired communion with the Orthodox Church in hope for full communion in the near future. Appropriate that the city that sees itself at the centre of this union is guided, not by a solitary figure, but the “dynamic duo” of two very different Apostles. May the church continued to be blessed by their common patronage and the balance that they represent!
Over the summer months I will be travelling a little, teaching a little, and spending a lot of time with family and friends near Seattle. My blogging will slow (and indeed I am writing some of these rather post-facto) but I will also have some time for more meaty reflection on some of the themes and events raised during this incredible year in Rome.
Roman June
It is hot, and it is certainly humid. It could be worse, I am told, and there are definitely some redeeming qualities of Roman June. One of which is that it is not Roman August, and I know I will be home for that!
The academic year of the Angelicum was more or less set in the time of St. Thomas Aquinas, though the university’s origins are with the 16th century House of Formation for the Dominican Order. Class begins mid-October and end in May; the entire month of June is set aside for exams. By university statute, they happen in June, the whole of June, and no month but June. Naturally this means that most are scheduled between late May and early June – I was in finals mode for a month, but I have a couple of weeks of freedom to enjoy the City. Two experiences illustrate how to spend these Roman summer days.
Basilica San Clemente
Sunday, June 13 – An American friend and I decided to head to St. Peter’s for mass. Rather than rushing across town for the 10am, however, we opted for leisurly morning starting with cappuccino and cornetto (croissant with Nutella filling) at my favorite local bar, Café San Celemente – literally across the street from the Basilica San Clemente. We ventured over to San Pietro just in time for the Sunday Angelus, a brief prayer and address by the pope. While there we encountered no less than three different people or groups known to one or the other of us, including one from the states just in Rome for the week! We made it inside for an early afternoon liturgy at the St. Joseph chapel.
Tiber Riverwalk
We spent the next couple of hours touring the basilica and piazza, tourist shopping on the Via della Concilizione, eating pizza by the slice, and then a holy hour devotion at the San Lorenzo youth pilgrimage centre nearby. What could have then been a 30 minute bus ride home turned into a four hour walk along the Tiber with generous time spent at a riverside bar set up for the summer, complete with comfortable lounging couches along the riverwalk. 14 hours out and about, with the only plan for the day being the Eucharist!
Cafe della Pace
Saturday, June 19 – A Danish friend and I decided to get together for coffee and some conversation about mid morning. This time we met near the famous and picturesque Café della Pace, which is the quintessential Roman café – cobblestone street, outside seating, low traffic and a church nearby, all within a couple blocks of Piazza Navona. It comes with quintessential pricing too, so we opted for a humbler, and homier, bookstore/coffee house across the street that charges no more to sit down than to take your coffee at the bar. Two hours later we wander to the Pantheon for lunch on the steps, taken from a pizzeria popular with the municipale – the Roman city cops. 
A meander through the city north takes us to the Piazza del Poplo and up to the edge of the Villa Borghese overlooking the piazza for some excellent people watching and a view of the city. From there we part ways and I wander back along the Viale Gabriele D’Annunzio to Chiesa Treinita dei Monti – famous as the church a the top of the Spanish Steps – and the Via Sistina to Maria Maggiore before heading back home.
Trinita dei Monti and Spanish Steps
The Year of the Priest: Corresponsibility of Priests and Laity
The Lay Centre has three major aspects to its ministry of hospitality and formation. The first is the one most familiar to anyone reading my blog or following my studies, which is the community of students and scholars who live in the house of formation throughout the academic year (Oct-June) and who eat, pray and learn together in an ongoing dialogue of life. The second is the ongoing adult formation offered (mostly) to the English-speaking population of Rome. Theology, spirituality, church history, liturgy, art, and architecture offered by faculty of the pontifical universities and visiting scholars every Thursday morning as part of the Vincent Pallotti Institute.
The third piece of the mission is the summer seminars and retreats offered by the lay centre. During June, July, and September groups come in from around the world to spend a week in Rome. Some have their own agenda and primarily enjoy the hospitality of the Lay Centre, while others are sponsored by the Centre directly and open to anyone from around the world.
A few years ago I remember hearing about Rome’s first-ever symposium on Lay Ecclesial Ministry, and recall thinking to myself, “First? This has been going on 50 years and they are only now talking about it???” Little did I know. (One can hear about how slowly time moves in the Eternal City, but you really have to be there to appreciate it, soak it in, and start wondering what all the fuss was about back when you cared about things like deadlines, traffic laws, and absolute concepts of any kind…)
One of the programs offered this summer was the latest in the series touching on lay ecclesial ministry, but with a timely twist. In honor of the Year of the Priest, and timed to coincide with the closing festivities of the year, the theme was taken from Pope Benedict’s address to the annual convention of the diocese of Rome (given at St. John Lateran on May 26, 2009) and again later to the presbytery of Rome at the beginning of the year: “Corresponsibility of Priests and Laity”.
The unique opportunities for a program like this in Rome include access to so much of the Church’s history within walking distance, access to curia officials, access to representatives of the Church from all over the world, and of course the hospitality of the Lay Centre.
The program progressed through the centuries day by day, with an examination of key saints and their experience of “corresponsibility”. We studied St. Paul and his collaborators with Abbot Edmund Power of the Benedictine Abbey of St. Paul Outside the Walls – guardians of the tomb of the great missionary and co-patron of Rome. St. Justin Martyr, a layman, buried at St. Lawrence Outside the Walls. Pope St. Gregory the Great, with his oratory of St. Andrew is literally just over the wall from my Roman home. St. Vincent Pallotti was an early modern pioneer of lay formation.
Contemporary organizations and developments we looked at included the Emmanuel Community, Sant’Egidio, the Pontifical Council for the Laity, and the Union of the Catholic Apostolate. Presenters included Dr. Marian Diaz, Fr. William Henn of the Gregorian, Ms. Ana Crisitina Villa-Betancourt of the PCL, Fr. Jean Baptiste Edart of the Emmanuel Community, and John Breen of the Beda College in Rome. The participants were mostly students and (both lay and ordained) ministers from the U.S., but included one Dutch pastoral life director.
[Further Reflection to Follow]
Santa Sabina and the Aventine
Santa Sabina, Interior
Santa Sabina is the 5th century basilica on the Aventine hill, just south and across the Tiber from the Vatican, that has served as the home of the General Curia (read, worldwide headquarters) for the Order of Preachers since not long after they were founded by St. Dominic in the early 13th century. In the midst of finals, one of my Dominican classmates, Benedict, offered to lead a small group of us through the basilica and adjacent buildings.
A half dozen of us gathered in the very rooms of the founder for mass, both of which were thankfully de-baroquified some years ago. This was another of those inspiring, unscripted days offered by life in Rome, when you can walk in the footsteps of saints and get a taste of the diachronic communion of the Church.
We wandered the hall where Thomas Aquinas slept, studied, and eventually composed at least part of the Summa and other works. The dining room remains the same one that fed the Great Ox. An incredible view of the city and St. Peter’s awaits on the north side. The basilica itself features some unique mosaics and even a stone that pious legend holds was thrown by Satan himself to distract Dominic from prayer. (Another, slightly more recent legend holds that if you touch the stone and it feels cold, you are in a state of mortal sin and must be confessed by a Dominican immediately. Conveniently, the stone is as black as obsidian and kept indoors year round.) Pius V was another resident of the convent, and is often the pope credited for “creating” the tradition of white as the papal color, by refusing to shed his Dominican habit for the then-normal scarlet after election. Whether accurate or not, it is true that Pius V should be well known for publishing the Roman Missal that was the norm for the celebration of the Eucharist throughout the Western church for four centuries – now known most commonly as the Tridentine Rite.
In the neighborhood we also stopped by the basilica of Sant’Alessio and the most famous keyhole in the world, at the headquarters of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. There, standing in Italian soil, you can gaze through a garden belonging to the SMOM and see a perfectly framed view of the dome of St. Peter’s – three countries in one keyhole. Across the piazza sits the Anselmo, the Benedictine pontifical university that is the traditional center of liturgical education in the Church (outside of Notre Dame, of course!).
View through the keyhole at the Sovereign Military Order of Malta
Intercontinental Cross-Cultural Dialogue is…
… staying up until the early hours in a city that is nearly 2800 years old, talking of life, love and religion with friends from four continents. Feliz Cumpleaño, David!
Pentecost at the Pantheon
One of the sights to see in Rome is Pentecost at the Pantheon. Since my Jubilee pilgrimage to Rome, they have set up pews and dressed up the altar to bring further attention to the fact that this most-famous of pagan temples is also (since the 6th century) a consecrated church. For the feast of Pentecost, at the end of the liturgy Rome’s fire department drops thousands of red rose petals from the oculus to the floor below, an image of the Spirit appear like tongues of flame around the apostles gathered in the Upper Room. To add to the effect, the sun was clearly cutting through the coouds of incense smoke, and a white bird chose just that moment to fly in and start flying circles around the falling flowers. (One person in the assembly gasped, “look, a dove!” which would have been fitting, but it was just a seagull…)
The Dialogue of Life in Rome
A former student-resident of the Lay Centre returned this semester as a visiting professor at the Pontifical University Gregoriana (the Jesuit university down the road). Dr. Esra Göezler is a Turkish Muslim who had studied in Rome and returned to co-teach a course with Christian and Jewish scholars, and as a scholar-in-residence at the Lay Centre.
Near the end of the semester Esra sat in a panel presentation at the Lay Centre with a German Jesuit and an Italian Jewish reporter titled “Abrahamaic Religions in the Dialogue of Life in Rome” in which each participant shared their experience of living in the Eternal City in the daily life dialogue with the other Abrahamic faiths. The Lay Centre and PISAI – the Pontifical Institute for the Study of Arabic and Islam, another Jesuit faculty in the City – featured prominently in the discussion.
Over the next few days, Esra provided further opportunity for dialogue and encounter, as the Lay Centre hosted the (brand new) Turkish Ambassador to the Holy See, Professor Kenan Gürsoy and his wife for dinner on 25 May. The following evening Padre Miguel Ayuso-Guixot, director of PISAI presided at our final mass and community night of the academic year. We were honored by the presence and insights of all three distinguished guests by Esra’s initiative.
At around the same time we heard good news about our housemate, another extraordinary Muslim scholar, Rezart Beka of Albania. Rezart has been in Rome this year on scholarship from the Nostra Aetate Foundation, set up in 1990 by Pope John Paul II for non-Christians to study Christianity at the pontifical universities in Rome. Scholars usually stay for one semester, and Rezart was already granted an extension. Facing the possibility of losing him as a student next year as the scholarship came to an end, a donor has set up an entirely new scholarship for Muslims to study at PISAI and Rezart is the inaugural recipient!
Lay Centre residents Nagwa Zarkaa Elymama (Egypt) and Rezart Beka (Albania) are presented to Pope Benedict XVI
Russian National Orchestra in the Vatican
How often is St. Peter’s Square turned into a parking lot? The cabbie that dropped us off said he has lived in Rome for half his life, and never seen it. But that was the sight that greeted us as we were dropped off at the Paul VI Auditorium for what promised to be an enjoyable afternoon out with the Holy Father (and a few other folk).
These two days have been celebrated as “Russian Culture Days at the Vatican”, one of the key public events of which was today’s concert by the Russian National Orchestra, a gift of the Russian Patriarch Kirill I to Latin Patriarch Benedict XVI.
Metropolitan Hilarion Alfeyev, the President of the Department for External Affairs of the Patriarch of Moscow (read: top ecumenist), personally presented the gift of the concert to His Holiness, which included a Symphony in Five Parts composed by the metropolitan himself. The concert included pieces by Rachmaninov, Rimski-Korsakov, and Musorgskij by the Russian National Orchestra; a variety of pieces by the Russian National Horn Choir, and another selection from Musorgskij and Rachmaninov with the Synod Choir of Moscow before all three combined for the final Symphony piece by Metropolitan Hilarion.
Cathedral of Christ the Savior, Seat of the Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia
On the way into the building, I kept getting saluted by the Swiss Guard. At first I kept looking to see if they were saluting everyone, or if some bishop was walking behind me. Eventually we figured that in my black suit with a small red Jerusalem cross in my lapel (a souvenir from my recent pilgrimage) they may have mistaken me for a Knight of the Holy Sepulcher! Not sure there are any this young, though!
As most know, I have an affinity for things Russian, including the music, so this was a special treat for me – to combine my love of Russia, ecumenism, the Church and the Vatican all into one event. We also got seats just behind and to the right of the Holy Father and the cardinals, which made it that much more exciting. This was my first time inside the Paul VI auditorium, which can seat about 6000 people, and which is entirely powered by solar panels on the roof.
There is no question that, with the election of Benedict XVI and even more so with the election of Kirill I, relations between Rome and Moscow have thawed considerably. We continue to pray for the unity of the world’s largest Orthodox Church and the Catholic Church, and look forward to fruits of dialogue even more beautiful than an afternoon’s concert!
Dinner and a movie – Cajun style!
The Drs. Diaz and family were back at the Lay Centre this evening. This time, the U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See, his wife (and fellow theologian) Marian, and two of their boys brought over a Cajun-themed dinner to help celebrate a culture night focusing on Lousiana. Apparently, culture and movie nights were a fairly common activity at Villa Richardson under Ambassador Mary Ann Glendon, and the Diaz family is looking to continue the custom at least occasionally in partnership with the Lay Centre (which Ambassador Diaz called the family’s second home in Rome this evening!).
The public affairs officer in the Embassy is J. Nathan Bland, a Lousiana native who shared a presentation about the people, faith, culture and cuisine of his home state. We were doubly honored by the presence of Nathan’s mother who was visiting Rome for the first time! Nathan shared his experience growing up as an African-American Catholic, a double minority in northern Louisiana, and his journey of discovery of black Catholic history and experience. The Ambassador then shared thoughts on his experience working with Latino and African-American Catholic theology.
The evening was capped with a viewing of Disney’s Princess and the Frog, notable as the first Disney feature film whose protagonist is an African-American, and is set in New Orleans.
I do not know the last time I have seen a room of 40 grown adults watching a Disney movie, but it was a sight to see! The food was good, too!
Disney's Princess and the Frog
The Ecumenism Blog 