Rome
Today turned out to be more interesting than I had anticipated! I went over to the Anglican Centre in Rome, which is near to St. Peter's Square. It is the headquarters for the Anglican Communion's ecumenical dialogues with the Roman Catholic Church. The Archbishop of Canterbury's Representative to the Holy See works and lives there. They welcome visitors and suggest you drop by on a Tuesday as they have Holy Eucharist at 12:45 followed by lunch. So I made my way over there late morning. It was about a 20 minute walk from where we are staying in Trastevere. The offices of the Anglican Centre are housed in a huge museum, and there is nothing but a small bronze plaque on a side door to let you know you've come to the right place. You have to ring a buzzer to get through the first gate and then a lively Italian lady shows you where the tiny, ancient elevator is that takes you up to the third floor where the Centre is located. When you emerge from the elevator you find a narrow, unmarked hallway which winds around and finally brings you out near the door to the Centre. Then you have to ring again and they buzz you in! It's quite a production! I was a little early so had a chance to speak with Archbishop David Maxon, the current representative from Canterbury. They have a lovely set up there with a big room with floor to ceiling books which is their library, then a little room that serves as a chapel and a large parlor/living room where lunch is served. The Archbishop lives there in sleeping quarters back behind the large kitchen! As I was waiting for the service to begin, the Archbishop came up and asked if I would be willing to read the Intercessory prayers for the service, as someone had not shown up who was supposed to do so. I agreed. A few minutes later he came over and asked if I'd mind administering the chalice at communion too, as he had to play music during communion and didn't have anyone else to do that either! So I was certainly put to work on my first visit! I got a chuckle when, as we were distributing communion the presiding priest motioned me to follow him after we had communed the group in the chapel. We walked out of the chapel and through the living room and he whispered, "We have to bring communion to the cook!" So in we went to the kitchen, gave communion to the cook and then returned to the chapel! After the service we adjourned to the living room area where we enjoyed Prosecco while awaiting lunch to be served. I had a chance to chat with priests from Australia and Toronto, and with an English ex-pat living in Rome. Lunch was a delicious pasta with cheese and lemon sauce and a salad. After lunch the archbishop asked me if I would be interested in joining him and a few others at 4:30 for a private tour of an archeological dig that is going on under the museum, which I was more than happy to do. I left the center at about 2:30 and spent the next couple of hours touring the Pantheon and several huge churches that are nearby. I didn't want to stray too far from the Anglican Centre for fear of getting lost and not being there in time for the tour! I visited the French Church of San Luigi, which has a beautiful Caravaggio painting of the call of St. Matthew, among other works of art. At 4:30 I returned to the Anglican Centre and the archbishop took a small group of us (all of whom had been at Eucharist earlier!) down underneath the museum where the National Trust of Italy is doing a major dig, excavating an apartment/house believed to be the place where St. Paul spent two years under house arrest before he was martyred under Emperor Nero. We toured this ancient ruin, which is way down below street level now, having been buried by silt for centuries. David walked us through all the evidence that archeologists are amassing as they continue to excavate the site, all of which seems to support what was heretofore considered to be merely legend, that this is the site where Paul spent the 2 years prior to his death. The museum only allows small groups to go in at certain times of the week and the findings of this excavation are not yet public because the archeologists who are doing the work intend to publish their findings in due course and until that happens they don't want information about what they have found to be too widely published. So that was an unexpected treasure of a tour to stumble upon! I left there at 5:30 and then walked back to the apartment. It's a very hot day in Rome so I was glad to get into the air conditioning and sit down for a bit!
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