February 27th, 2011 Many surprises on my last day of retreat...the first comes as I try to find the chapel for Sunday Mass. No one is in...

February 24th, 2011 I am on retreat at San Martino delle Scale, the only Benedictine monastery still operating in Sicily. The site was...

December 9th, 2010 Yesterday our cook confided, “I want to be a pilgrim.” In part, the journey was to seek a healing for a painful...

October 31st, 2010 The view from Monte Mario, the highest point in Rome, is what medieval pilgrims saw when the city first spread out...

October 7th, 2010 During an early evening chat at a wine bar, the peculiar life of the stigmatist Padre Pio enters the conversation. A...

August 18th, 2010 After countless visitors have blissfully mentioned their visit to the Amalfi Coast, I decide I must go now. Last year,...

August 6th, 2010 It is time, finally, to explore the maze of rooms beneath San Giovanni and Paolo on the Caelian Hill. The area was once...

July 31st, 2010 During a visit to Saint Peter’s, a woman in front of me sits down on one of the large circles of porphyry that make up...

July 19th, 2010 A friend returns from Lourdes. She went there to dip into the miraculous spring. As she describes her visit, tears come:...

July 1st, 2010 Today I go on a day trip to Assisi. St. Clare of Assisi was fifteen years old when she first heard Francis preach a Lenten...

June 10th, 2010 Sutri, from the earliest times, was a strategic spot. Its walls are bolstered by sheer cliffs of volcanic stone and the...

May 19th, 2010 The Holy House of Loreto has been on my list of places to visit for a while. Tradition has it that angels lifted Mary’s...

April 22nd, 2010 The place for the ancient ruins of everyday is not in Rome, where politics and economics conspired to keep only the...

April 19th, 2010 Finally I am getting around to reading “Rome Before Avignon” by Robert Brentano. It deals with Rome during its most...

April 7th, 2010 Since Easter Sunday is not really a holiday, we have Pasquetta or “Little Easter” the following day. This is a civic...

March 30th, 2010 A lucky glance inside Chiesa Nuova alerted me to an upcoming performance of Pergolesi’s oratorio Stabat Mater. This...

March 27th, 2010 Enjoying the terrace on this early spring day, I read about one of my favorite buildings in R. A. Scotti’s “Basilica.”...

March 20th, 2010 After years of Saturday trips into the country, our parish is running out of destinations. Today we set off early to...

March 11th, 2010 Tasso Torquato (1544 - 1595), author of the epic poem Gerusalemme Liberata (Jerusalem Delivered), was a sort of talented...

February 4th, 2010 I make my way quickly past the elegant Palazzo della Cancelleria, the first building in Rome constructed in the...