FOOD FOR THOUGHT	CITY OF THE NATIONS
	Fr Francis Marsden
	   For 17th May 1987.

“24 seated, 96 standing” read the notices on the Roman buses. Still the same squeeze on the No. 64. Little seems to have changed in the Eternal City since 1985. They’ve tightened up on parking, and banned private traffic from entering within the Aurelian walls from 7-10 a.m. But it’s still noisy.

Rome is very much a city of the young, the young tourists of all nations. Hundreds and thousands of them, lounging round the piazzas and fountains, sitting outside the bars in the warm sunshine, watching the artists in the Navona.

One sees plenty of Ethiopian faces in the streets and markets. They are refugees from their communist government. Up to 3000 of them are accommodated by church institutions and religious orders in the city. The Italian government wanted to refuse them entry. The Pope is said to have persuaded them otherwise. The diocesan charity Caritas feeds them daily. One of the main centres is beneath the Jesuit mother church, the Gesù,  and is run by lay Catholics, priests and nuns. They also try to offer some language lessons, as these young Africans await their visas for Canada or the U.S.A. The Banco Ambrosiano affair takes the headlines. This other activity of the Roman church is ignored.

During my short stay, like a little iron filing, I am magnetically drawn towards bookshops. And what bookshops!  Theology in Italian and French, German and Spanish, English or Latin. Authors from Africa and Chile, India and Eastern Europe provide a range far surpassing anything available in England. It is both humbling and frustrating to see so much learning, so many years of research and prayerful labour lined up on the shelves. Far more than any one mind can fully grasp.

My old university, the Gregorian, has over 2000 students from about 90 nations. The Jesuit professors similarly are from all over the world. They live on the third and fourth floors, above the sombre lecture halls. Their rather bare rooms contain only a desk and chair, bed and bookcases, many theses and papers piled up everywhere. They live their academic life in exile from their homelands in Hungary or Yugoslavia, Australia or Spain. Out of term they often travel widely, giving conferences and retreats. Some celebrate Mass~ or hear confessions in the Roman parishes and basilicas. Some are consultants for the Vatican congregations on the finer points of doctrine and morals, canon law and history. It is a somewhat Spartan existence, but many of today’s bishops and cardinals look back to the Greg. profs with fond or painful memories of their years of study.

If one adds in the other Roman universities — the Lateran, the Angelicum, the Alfonsianum and several others, run by different religious orders – one realises the immense reservoir of scholarship and holiness in Rome, made up from men and women from “every tribe and tongue and people and nation”.

Rome is truly a city of the nations. For several years I played the guitar at the Lumen Christi prayer group at the Gregorian. One Sunday afternoon it suddenly struck me that each one of the five of us. playing the music was from a different continent. We had a Benedictine priest from Sri Lanka, an Australian girl, a Canadian deacon of the Ukrainian rite, me from England, and a Ugandan sister who accompanied with a tambourine. This is the sort of minor miracle which becomes so routine that you rarely notice it.

Go to Mass: around Rome and you find a similar variety. The English College lies close to the parish church of San Lorenzo. At weekday evening Mass you find Mgr Agosto Cecchi, dwarfed by his massive high altar, ablaze with lights and flowers, an immense four-poster baldacchino soaring above him. A high soprano, nicknamed “La Voce” (The Voice) led the 60-80 strong congregation in hymns, alleluias and responses. If his curate was presiding, Don Agosto would sometimes play the little sanctuary organ to accompany the Eucharistic Prayer quietly.

When a priest from our college teased him: “You know, Monsignore, the rubrics do not allow for music accompanying the canon,” he replied with a twinkle in his eye: “Ma io sono nato malvagio.” (But I was born mischievous). For a while he was Master of Ceremonies to Pope Paul VI, whose sweat-stained amice he still conserves in the hope it may one day be a saint’s relic.

For eastern liturgy, try the Russian Catholic College. Surrounded by icons and incense, transported by the Slavonic chants, the deacons in blue vestments emerge and disappear through doors in the iconostasis (the screen separating the sanctuary from the people), calling out “Wisdom”, or “Attention” or “Holy things for the holy.” After two hours of this you can imagine yourself more in Nizhni-Novgorod than in Rome. It comes as a somewhat brutal and unwelcome shock to emerge into the sunlight and traffic noise of a western city.

Greek-speaking Catholics can worship at  Santa Maria in Cosmedin. It was an awesome sensation the first time I heard the Gospel chanted in Greek, proclaimed in the same language as it was written, 1900 years ago. There is a church which uses the Syro-Antiochene rite, based on Jewish Temple liturgy. At the German church the electronic hymn board may provide a distraction. Not only does it instruct you as to what hymn you must sing, but also tells you what verse you are up to. There’s a little operating console on the altar. This is indeed the Mass organized with Teutonic efficiency.

I called into the Comunita di Maria church in the old Jewish ghetto to buy some tapes. This ancient church building has been handed over to a prayer group. Every Saturday evening they pack it full with 500-600 of all ages, standing room only, for a prayer session followed by Mass, from 5.30 to 8.30 pm. And if 3 hours isn’t long enough for you, try the Easter Vigil at St Peter’s which that lasted 4 1/2  hours

St. Peter’s seems quietest and most prayerful in the early morning, before the tourists flood in. Tens of Masses are being offered on the side altars everywhere, the background murmur of prayer. Obviously the great Papal Masses spring to mind, especially the 1985 Palm Sunday Youth Mass, when a dense forest of nine-foot high palm branches advanced in procession. The scene was worthy of Macbeth’s “Till Birnam wood shall come to Dunsinane”. In wind and sunshine 300 priests in brilliant red chasubles, about 30 mitred bishops and the Pope, all processed to the cheers of several hundred thousand youngsters from the Obelisk to the open-air High Altar, accompanied by the palms and Hosannas.

Rome is a city full of life and variety, full of stark contrasts, where sanctity and iniquity rub shoulders. I suppose God had to choose one See to head the worldwide Church, and the history and life of that Church makes Rome a fascinating capital.