Day Two in Rome or Shots for Jesus

Day Two in Rome or Shots for Jesus

So today was church day in Rome.  We got up early, put on our pants, covered our shoulders, and walked. A. Lot. I bought a guide on Amazon for a cursory overview of various important churches in Rome.  Unlike the Vatican museum, the other churches have few rabid Catholics to mow you down.  No half-priced-Lenten-fish-fry traffic here. We are saving that experience for tomorrow.

After mapping out all of the churches on our self-made tour, we decided to stop and pound shots of espresso after each church.  In Rome, if you stand at the bar, you can generally get an espresso for a Euro (1.11$ USD give or take).  It is a power-packed shot of caffeine in a dose that knocks backs easily and is occasionally followed with a water chaser.  Damn coffee in Italy is amazing. If there is one thing I've learned, is that if your coffee requires cream or sugar, it is to cover up the quality of the beans.  Black is beautiful, my friend.

I could go into detail about each church, but let's assume you have public television for the details.  If you have the Discovery Channel, I'm sure they will tell you how to marry a naked little person in three months while living in a swamp eating bugs instead of a quarterly beg-a-thon with complimentary mug and tote bag to say thanks.

 We decided not to play the Catholic favorite fundraiser called cover all bingo! but for churches.  They are everywhere and only the good ones tend to be open.  I have no idea how Rome can handle so many churches.  Yeah, it's Rome but only Starbucks has figured out the every-corner approach to marketing it's product.  The Catholic Church isn't that good-even with Holy Days of Obligation.  Starbucks offers Happy Hour Fraps.

Did you know that the Pope's home church is not the Vatican?  It's actually Saint John Lateran.  Once upon a time, there was a rich and powerful French king who was able to move the papacy to Avignon France for a while. (Fortunately for Rome, the Black Death hit Europe around this time sparing Rome.  Take that France!). On the Papacy's return, it located in Saint John Lateran.  All popes were enthroned here until 1870.   You can probably imagine it's grandeur. Or not.  Don't get me wrong, it is beautiful but an earthquake is 897, several fires, and its vacancy while the papacy was in France left its mark on the church.

If you look closely, you can spot me

Across the street from the church are The Holy Stairs (Scala Santa) "These are renowned because it is believed that Jesus Christ stepped on them during His Passion. They were relocated from Jerusalem to Rome in 326 by St Helena."(Rome.net)  There are a lot of interesting relics in Rome.  Get over the magic Mormon underwear.  Today we also saw the base of pillar where Christ was scourged as well as part of the manger.  Everyone's got a piece of the true cross but the manger?  That's big time.  Saint John Lateran claims to have the skull of Saint Paul.  I suspect it was in the church's museum, located behind the very tacky, if not camp, gift shop.

We walked into a very old church containing beautiful Byzantine mosaics.  An American priest asked me what I thought.  I said they were exuberant. He agreed.  He was leading tour and indicated the mosaics were likely early Syrian and did not belong in Rome.  I chortled and said I was Byzantine Catholic.  I was then asked to translate questions they had in the icon from ancient Greek.  Clearly this man did not know my scholarly Catholic upbringing, or lack thereof. The only thing I could add to the conversation was that Mary was wearing an unusual color for the time.  Until the proliferation of blue as a pigment, Mary was typically depicted wearing red.  She also had her hands pointed in a direction indicating something I learned and forgot again over the last week.