Today, I enjoyed another excellent day of wandering Rome with Mum and Dad.
We visited the Church of Saint Clement. This is such a wonderful church because of the fact that the present church is build upon the ancient Church of St Clement, and this in turn is built upon a pagan temple. Three different levels and visitors can go down and look at them. Amazing, and very well preserved. it is also the tombs of Cyril and Methodius and of course St Clement.
We prayed especially for blessings for my uncle, Clem, whose patron saint is this saint. We also prayed for my parish priest i had as a child, Fr Cyril Shand, who died not long before I was ordained.
We then visited the amazing church of St Peter in Chains where the chains believed to have been used to hold St Peter are kept. Also, the famous tomb of Julius II including the statue of Moses by Michaelangelo is in this church.
After lunch we visited the ancient civic centre of Rome, the Roman Forum. Mum, Dad and I walked through the ruins and looked at the buildings and monuments that are all that remains of the centre of the ancient Roman empire. The one I like the best is the ancient Rostri, the stage where public citizens could come and speak to the people, and this is where Marc Anthony gave his famous speech after the assassination of Julius Ceasar.
We also went to see the church of Mary and the Martyrs and Angels. You may remember that we tried to go there the other day but were unable to because of an enormous state funeral there, which also blocked the streets.
Today we tried again, but excitement seems to be following us, because AGAIN the streets around this church were entirely blocked to traffic. Thousands of people waving red flags were having a rally and march in the streets around there. It was a peaceful march from what we saw and in fact the march, although crowded, allowed us to moved more easily across the streets by foot. When we came to the church, there were protesters holding an enormous banner. We just walked past them and they let us in. When we came out, there was someone holding up a sign saying something in Italian like 'the church should give justice" or words to that effect. I just gave a friendly smile and moved on. The person holding the sign looked a bit surprised, perhaps they were expecting a less friendly reaction?
We went to mass at a local church which has English language mass for the weekend. St Susanna's. They had children's liturgy and excellent music. It reminded me of home.
I have uploaded some more photos of our days together at www.mysteriousthree.com
Also, the college whereI am staying has published a few photos of the recent diaconate they had at St Peter's. Somehow I ended up in a few photos, (just to prove that I was there and didn't sleep in and miss it!) so if you would like to visit the site of these photos, it is at :
http://www.pnac.org/resource/public/photoload.aspx?domain=PUC&id=2007.10.04%20-%20Diaconate%20Ordination
cheers and God bless
Paul
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