Easter Eggs

I did not see any colored hard boiled eggs this Easter. But, there were many chocolate eggs to be found... in supermarkets, tabacchi, candy stores, news stands and bakeries. The most popular Easter Egg in Rome is a large hallow chocolate egg with a toy inside. It is wrapped in "abundant" and colorful  foil or cellophane. 

Here is our dining room table on Easter day. The blue package on the left is a hollow egg that contained a mini-basketball game. The orange package in the foreground contains a "colomba," a special frosted Easter bread in the shape of a dove.

Images from Easter

We are part of an international Catholic community in Rome called Caravita. It gets this name because it meets at the Church of St. Francis Xavier "della Caravita" near the Pantheon. During Holy Week I was an acolyte and reader, and Vincenzo sang in the choir.

Msgr. Don Bolen blessing the new fire

at the start of the Easter Vigil.

The Pascal Candle and baptismal water

On Easter Sunday afternoon we stopped by the Church of Santa Maria Sopra Minerva to look again at the amazing statue of the Resurrected Christ by Michaelangelo.

Happy Easter

When we returned home from the Easter Vigil we found flowers on all of the doors in our apartment building with the message "Christ is Risen!"

Good Friday: Stations of the Cross

These Stations of the Cross by Mimmo Paladino are in the Church of Santo Volto di Gesù in Rome.

I. Jesus is Condemned to Death

II. Jesus Takes Up the Cross

III. Jesus Falls the First Time

IV. Jesus Meets His Mother

V. Simon Helps Jesus

VI. Veronica Wipes the Face of Jesus

VII. Jesus Falls the Second Time

VIII. Jesus Meets the Women

IX. Jesus Falls the Third Time

X. Jesus is Stripped

XI. Jesus Dies on the Cross

XII. Jesus Dies on the Cross

XIII. Jesus is Taken Down From the Cross

XIV. Jesus is Placed in the Tomb

XV. Resurrection

5th Week of Lent: San Stefano Rotondo

My Lenten Journey takes me to the Church of San Stefano Rotondo on the Celian Hill. It was built in the 5th Century on the former site of military barracks for non-Italian soldiers.
Today the neighborhood still has the feeling of a tranquil seclusion that attracted the composer Palentrina in the 16th Century, according to Georgina Mason in her Companion Guide to Rome.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

Upon entering the church, I am awed by the purity of the round plan of the building and the way it is bathed in light. The altar is in the center, and the cross has been covered in purple for Lent. There are many tourists gazing at the patterns created by the antique columns and wooden ceiling. The walls are covered with frescoes depicting very "unmerciful" martyrdom scenes. Charles Dickens had this to say about these frescoes in his Pictures of Italy (1846) :
To single out details from the great dream of Roman Churches, would be the wildest occupation in the world. But St. Stefano Rotondo, a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous paintings with which its walls are covered. These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early Christians; and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken.... So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him.
























Once I settled down in a chair, I was able to keep the frescoes in the background and allow the architecture to energize my mind and soul. I imagined Palestrina's music accompanying worship in this space. I became aware that over the centuries pilgrims have come into this space to seek mercy. And here I am. Dear God, help me to be merciful - and be merciful to me!

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.

New McDonald's in Rome

There was something new this morning at the corner where I change buses  on my way to school. Across the street from the Basilica of Saint Paul Outside the Walls there is now a McDonald's. 


Roman McDonald's have a feature usually not found in the American siblings: McCafe. It is a section of the restaurant with a stand up counter serving espresso and cappuccino with the typical pastries found in the traditional Roman coffee bars.

Someday it might be nice to sit on the roof under a market umbrella with a Coke & french fries and watch the pilgrims come and go from the basilica.

March of the Penguins

Yesterday we got a Blockbuster card and watched March of the Penguins. It was in Italian with Italian subtitles. A wonderful film! Here are a couple of pictures I took yesterday of marches or processions. 

This is the Palm Sunday procession at San Filippo Neri, the church across the piazza from our home. Notice there are no palms. Italians have olive branches!

This is a group of bikers near the Pope's summer residence at Castle Gondolfo.