In Via
Planning a trip? Or just on the pilgrimage of daily living? We are the podcast at the intersection of faith and travel, assisting you on the journey to encounter Christ. Hear stories, discover travel tips, and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we’ll show you that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, Rome, Lourdes, Mexico City, or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you - right there in your car, on your run, or in the middle of your workday.
In Via
Walking Rome with St. Philip Neri: The Seven Church Pilgrimage
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Walking through Rome on the Seven Church pilgrimage offers deep encounters with saints and history while following in St. Philip Neri's creative footsteps of evangelization. Father Jonathan Meyer leads us through this walk while sharing his knowledge of Rome's basilicas, catacombs, and traditions from his years of study there.
Learn:
• How St. Philip Neri reformed Rome in the 16th century through creative evangelization and joyful witness
• What basilicas are considered the "Seven Pilgrim Churches of Rome"
• A little bit about each of these churches
Looking to experience the Jubilee in 2025? It's not too late! Visit versoministry.com/jubilee for trip dates and more information.
Introduction to In Via Podcast
Speaker 1Welcome to In Via, the podcast where we're navigating the pilgrimage of life. We are all in via on the way and we are learning a lot as we go. I'm your host, joan Watson. Join me as we listen to stories, discover travel tips and learn more about our Catholic faith. Along the way, we'll see that if God seeks to meet us in Jerusalem, rome or Santiago, he also wants to encounter you right there in your car, on your run or in the middle of your workday. In today's episode, I am pleased to be joined with Father Jonathan Meyer, a parish pastor of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Hi, father.
Speaker 2Hello there, how are you?
Speaker 1I am great. Father and I went to Rome together. Was that last summer, two summers ago?
Speaker 2No, it was two summers ago it was in 2003 for World Youth Day. In preparation for World Youth Day is the best way to say it.
Speaker 1That's right, because World Youth Day obviously wasn't in Rome, it was in Portugal. But if you're going to take kids across the ocean, you should probably take them to Rome.
Speaker 2However, going to Fatima was awesome, and taking kids to World Youth Day in general is always an awesome and a great decision that all people should make, even if it's in Asia.
Speaker 1That's right. We'll have you do a commercial for Seoul pretty soon and why we should go to World Youth Day. But we went to Rome prior to World Youth Day in preparation for World Youth Day, and father loves Rome. Father, you studied in Rome.
Speaker 2I did. I lived in Rome from 1999 to 2003.
Speaker 1So you were there for the 2000 Jubilee, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 2I was there for the great Jubilee or 2000.
Speaker 1Did you know what you were getting into Like did you know? No, I didn't even know what a Jubilee was.
Speaker 2I had no idea. I was very ignorant and still am in many ways in my catholic faith and I had no idea, like, what that meant and I didn't really know that all that much about pope john paul ii. Really, uh, really, it was just a different era and time when it comes to the internet and knowing things and but um yeah, it was the best of times. It really was. I absolutely loved my time in Rome and loved the opportunity to have an international education and to just breathe in the culture that is Rome.
Speaker 1It is interesting to think like if we wanted to know what John Paul II was saying, we had to buy a book.
Speaker 2You had to buy a book or subscribe to what used to be known as a newspaper or a magazine. These are pieces of paper that were glued together or folded together and would arrive in a mailbox that a postal deliverer would carry, not an amazon bag and you would find out, like the next week, what he said the week earlier. Yeah, very different world.
Speaker 2I think about even just like with the election of Pope Leo XIV, like we had to be like there. We lived in a world where some people wouldn't know there was a new Pope for months. Yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, Like in the middle ages, you'd be praying for this Holy Father and somebody would come into your town and be like oh, he's not Pope anymore.
Speaker 2He died.
Speaker 1Yeah, holy father, and somebody'd come into your town and be like oh, he's not pope anymore, actually, but we knew it instantaneously. Um, so when you were over there for the jubilee 2000 did you get to participate in some of the special jubilee events? Like for like the opening or no were you?
Speaker 2yeah, I had. Um, I had a friend that was able to be, uh, with pope john paul ii as he opened the doors and he was one of the first ones to walk through and he had, like, scribbled down the names of all my family members and friends and people I was praying for at that time. That was in his sport coat when he walked through and I yeah, so I was there.
Speaker 2I made it a habit to go to St Francis Basilica as much as I possibly could, which is multiple times a week. To get to Syncretist Basilica as much as I possibly could, which is multiple times a week, to get the indulgence. And I went to a lot of the canonizations that took place during the year 2000. I was there for World Youth Day. It was the first World Youth Day I attended in the year 2000 in the city of Rome and, yeah, I was there for all of it.
Speaker 2I was there when the Jubilee door then closed. Yeah, I lived it. It was a dream. What a gift.
Speaker 1What a gift, and Father has never missed a World Youth Day since, so I think that's pretty awesome.
Speaker 2I am a junkie. I'm looking for number four to number 10. Number 10.
Father Meyer's Experience in Rome
Speaker 1So when we talk about the city of Rome, there is a saint that sticks out in my mind. People think of Peter and Paul, but there is a saint known as the second apostle to Rome he kind of reconverted Rome and that saint's Philip Neary. And so I thought we could talk about Philip Neary and a tradition that he started or participated in. I think he started it the seven pilgrim church walk.
Speaker 1So, could you tell us maybe a little bit about Philip Neary and his connection to Rome, or whatever you want to tell us about Philip Neary? Yeah.
Speaker 2So St Philip Neary was a very zealous man who just wanted the conversion of Rome and he had seen how Rome had fallen just into secular ways and secular things. And he also looked at the clergy and he realized that many of the priests were not living good, zealous lives and so he wanted to bring together priests and not ordained and have them kind of just live a very zealous holy life and ultimately so he founded what is now known as the Oratory, which at its root is the word Ora, which means to pray, like Oramus or Ora et Labora, and he believed in catechesis, he believed in prayer. And he also was like so many saints, I think like saints we should like look at them like in the pious sense, but also just like in the practical sense, like saints were very creative sense, like saints were very creative. So St Francis of Assisi is attributed for bringing the stations of the cross and the nativity scene. That's creative, that's artistic.
Speaker 2St Philip Neary was really a very he loved to engage culture. So he would sit outside of pubs and taverns and he would listen to the songs they were singing and then he would take the tunes and the melodies but then he would change and write his own lyrics to them. So he would take secular songs but then write lyrics and teach them to children on the street so they would be singing about Jesus. Um, he loved. There's actually a tree up on the Janiculum Hill where he uh, which is one of the hills in the city room, and he would just do outdoor catechesis. So instead of having children go inside school buildings or inside churches, he would do catechesis outside, uh, to meet the children where they were at, where they were playing.
Speaker 2He believed deeply in prayer and in just celebrating Mass reverently and piously. He was actually known, very much so for falling into ecstasy and mystical contemplation during Mass, so much so that if he needed to say Mass quickly, they would actually put chickens into the chapel where he was celebrating mass. That would peck at his feet during mass so they would be distracted so that he would not be in ecstasy, because the altar servers were actually trained to snuff the candles during the elevations because he would hold up Jesus and then he would just stand there for sometimes 30 minutes before he would put Jesus down. So just a great, pious, loving individual. He very much cared for the poor, had a huge heart for reaching out to those who you know were on the fringes of society.
Saint Philip Neri: Rome's Creative Reformer
Speaker 2And then he also is the one who so we as Americans our country is very new and we I always think this is really interesting Like if you go to a historical site in America, like if you go to Mount Vernon or Valley Forge we'll have people in colonial dress and we'll be speaking in British accents and they will, and we, we restore our, we make sure that George Washington's bedroom looks exactly as it did, and we have like grants and foundations to make sure that all these buildings will always look amazing. That's not the case over in in Europe, and in fact. So what we think about the catacombs? The catacombs have been abandoned. No one was going to the catacombs.
Speaker 2And that's why, if you go to Rome, like the Colosseum is falling down, it's continuing falling down the Roman Forum, like no one's ever going to rebuild it, and have you like, hey, this is what it looked like and we're going to have people in Toges telling you what it's like. No, you just show up and you're like, yeah, there, and I really don't know what this is and there's no one to tell me about it. So, anyways, the catacombs have been abandoned and St Philip Neri actually would go, kind of like found his way into the catacombs and he would go and pray in the chapels of the saints and the martyrs, and it was there that he prayed fervently to the Holy Spirit for his heart just to be caught on fire with god's love, and his heart actually expanded and broke his rib cage and, um, this is actually true, they did like an autopsy after he died to prove the fact it's actually. But anyways, his heart actually expanded out of love for god and he, yeah, just brought this love out into the city and was able to just draw people close to the Lord, so much so that people knew that he was a saint when he was living. And so he tried.
Speaker 2He actually raised a girl from the dead, and there's a year every year on the anniversary of the. It's a private home where the girl was raised from the dead, and once a year on the day that this, the anniversary they opened this home and mass is celebrated in the home again and people line up in the streets throughout Rome to go up into the, into the room where the young girl was brought back to life. So then he they knew that he was holy and he um. So at one point he like shaved off half of his beard so that he would look like like he was, like he was crazy, so that people would think that he wasn't holy, and so I shaved my entire beard off today to let you know that I am crazy as well, but I'm really no.
Speaker 2But, yeah, so just a great guy. But I go back to the idea of like creative, because he realized that what was happening wasn't working. You know, saying mass in church alone wasn't engaging people.
Speaker 2It wasn't bringing people in, it wasn't meeting people where they were at, and people needed something. So he was willing to be creative and innovative, and sometimes it's hard in the church to find people who are creative. It's hard to find people who are innovative. We want to do the same thing over and over again, expect different results. Well, some of you might know that's the definition of insanity. So St Philip Mary was the farthest from insane and he looked for creative ways to do things differently. And so the seven church walk, or the seven church pilgrimage, is a way that he would engage people in a new, creative way to bring them closer to Jesus. How was that for an introduction on I love it.
Speaker 1I love it. I mean I just I think this idea of pilgrimage and he saw the culture as needing this transformation. But he went into something they were already doing, right, so like there was a time of carnival and there was a time of excess, and he's like I want to bring real community right. So he didn't just take away what people were doing I mean, you mentioned that with the songs, right. He said let's have real Christian community and let's go on pilgrimage and sing songs and have a picnic and have real Christian joy.
Speaker 1I want to center this in history. This is happening just post Reformation. So when Father mentioned there's like excesses and the priests aren't living, they're not living celibacy, they're not living poverty, they're not living the Christian life. What I love about Philip Neary is, in some ways he just does it right. He just lives a Christian life and his witness is living a joyful Christian life. Like we can focus on him raising somebody from the dead or his heart enlarging, but so much of his work was just being normal and Catholic and that's how he transformed culture and so he just, yeah, lived the Christian life as we're called to. I think that's just such a good reminder for us. I think.
Speaker 2Yep, totally agree. I think we need to constantly be asking that question and I think, like we see people go to the other extreme of like I want to engage the culture, but ultimately I'm ultimately is living the culture. It's, how do we appropriately permeate the culture with authentic catholic truth? That's and there can always be that. You know, it is easier to say we're just going to stay inside and chant beautiful things in Latin, like that's always safe, yeah, but safe doesn't always get you to the drunkards and the people that are out in the streets.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, the two extremes are easy. It's easy to just avoid culture or be part of culture. And so how do we thread that needle of virtue in moderation in the middle? So they would go on pilgrimage, they would go to the catacombs which he loved and he restored, and they would go to the four major basilicas and they would go to the minor basilicas, and is there any? Are any of the? So there's seven churches. Have you ever done this, father?
Speaker 2Oh my gosh, that is such a great question. I have. I have done the seven church walk multiple times, at least four, maybe more, and then we will also talk at some point, joan, about the seven gelateria walk, which I know is the real reason that we're having this podcast.
Speaker 1Okay, Listeners, stay tuned After we talk about churches. We are definitely talking about that. I'm making a note.
Speaker 2Yes, I'd love to talk about the Seven Church Walk, but I also love to talk about the Seven Gelateria Walk, yeah, that's going to hold people until the end of the episode.
Speaker 1So who does? Can anybody do the Seven Church Walk? Could I go do it right?
Speaker 2now Anyone can do the seven church walk at any time whenever there is a custom at the North American College that we would do the seven church walk normally on Tuesday of. Holy Week and it was a big deal because this was you know there'd be.
Speaker 1I would probably say there's 180 seminaries at the time.
Speaker 2I would say probably, there were probably close to 100 of us. So you had 100 men between the age of like 23 and 26 wearing clerics, walking through the city of Rome going on pilgrimage. It was fantastic, it really was. It was great.
Speaker 1So I studied in Rome during Lent and there's another tradition of the station churches which we can talk about someday. That's a whole other tradition. That's a whole other tradition. But it's morning mass and a lot of the guys would walk to the different churches and even seeing that and it was usually much smaller groups was such a testament. I mean, even in Rome, when you see a bunch of people in clerics all the time, there's something about groups of men and clerics walking with that purpose that really, really speaks. So I can't imagine seeing 100 guys walking out to the catacombs.
Speaker 1So, how long would it take you? We're talking a whole day thing.
Speaker 2This is such a great question that you're asking right now. So in preparation for our talk, I did a little bit of research and, if I look at my edition here, give me just 10 seconds. Yeah, it is about 14 miles total in one day.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2And I have the mileage broken down, so if someone wants to add this all up, they can do it later. But so people can start at different places. You can start anywhere. When we talk about the seven churches we're talking about, there are seven churches you're going to go to eventually. You can really start at any of them. We would always start at St Peter's Basilica because we we always just as men of the North American college, we always had a primacy of Peter and there was something very powerful for us to start at the tomb of St Peter and also just having mass at St Peter's is. Back in those days it was really easy to do to have an altar scheduled Of course St Philip Neri would have begun at Chiesa Nuova, which is very close to St Peter's Basilica.
Speaker 2It actually would be the closest church to Chiesa Nuova would be St Peter's Basilica. St Peter's Basilica and actually the distance between where St Philip Martin Erie actually lived and the North American college to St Peter's Basilica are probably almost equidistant, but just a few minute walk from those places. But St Peter's Basilica, I think you know, I mean a lot of people were watching St Peter's Basilica the last, you know, few months.
Speaker 2And I think people are still interested, so they're still like up what Leo is doing and what is he going to do. I think St Peter's Basilica can be overlooked of what St Peter's is really about. So primarily St Peter's Basilica is the mausoleum of St Peter, the reason why St Peter's?
Speaker 2Basilica is St Peter's Basilica is because it is built directly over the tomb of St Peter himself, and that is why it is where it is at and that is why the word Vatican exists. The Vatican predates Christianity. The word Vatican was a piece of property that had a cemetery already on it prior to the death of St Peter, and it's where the Emperor Nero had a circus, a large amphitheater that had been constructed, that was used for chariot games and ultimately for the execution of Christians. It's where Peter and Paul were mocked and then Peter was ultimately crucified upside down and was buried right next in the Vatican Cemetery.
Speaker 2So, anyways, the St Peter's Basilica is built directly above the bones of St Peter and the archaeological work behind that is spectacular.
Speaker 1We actually had an episode with your classmate, Father Thomas Sidlick, to talk about.
Speaker 2Talk about this I have no doubt that there is a very smart macker that has already been on here who was given the uh honor of being a scabby tour guide while in the city of rome. So anyways, if you haven't done that, check out that other podcast, because the authenticity of that is really powerful that there are the bones of a 70 year old man who has no feet because he was crucified upside down.
Starting the Seven Church Pilgrimage
Speaker 2That is buried directly under the high papal altar there in san peter so anyways we always would start with mass and then I led some college groups on these pilgrimages and I would always like teach him a little song and then we would sing and say prayers in the basilica and um, yeah. So then you would begin what is going to be your longest journey. So once again, you could go another route, but the route that we would always take is we would just be like we're going to do the longest one from that point on. So from St Peter's you're going to walk 5.1 miles to St Paul's, outside the wall. Now, the other reason why I think it's great to go directly from St Peter to St Paul's is to make that direct connection to St Peter and Paul being the two apostles of the city of Rome. But it is a long walk. It's a 5.1 mile walk. You walk along the Tiber River, for the most part.
Speaker 2Until you pass the island of St Bartholomew, you keep walking, you keep walking. Eventually you're going to take a left, crossing a bridge, and the walk takes about an hour and a half. So we would normally pray the rosary and just like do kind of other devotions and just even just like talk like normal people as we were going along the way. St Paul's is spectacular. I really I was just talking to a good friend of mine and we were talking about how St Paul's outside the wall.
Speaker 2And the reason why it's called St Paul's outside the wall is that during the time of the martyrdom of St Paul, it was not inside the city. The Via Appia, and where he was beheaded in a place called Tre Fontane, was outside the city of Rome.
Speaker 2So if someone goes, like if I was going to say hey, I'm going to Rome next week, do not miss going to St Paul outside the wall. It is such a powerful and beautiful church building and I can't yeah, I mean St Paul is buried there, but this is the famous church that has the picture of all the popes that are, like a border, along the top of the basilica and, yeah, it's just spectacular.
Speaker 1Even though it's the newest, because it was rebuilt after it burned down, it looks the oldest like it. I think it gives you the best idea of what the original saint peter's looked like and what like the roman basilica looks like, and that's why it's one of my favorites I like it as well because it really is so simple.
Speaker 2Yes, not to put down.
Speaker 2I mean, the saint peter's is amazing, but it really is simple where you know, at saint peter's, there's like statues in every pillar there's two statues in every single pillar and there's shrines everywhere and there's so many side altars. And where at saint paul's, it's pretty simple. It's like here's the confessio where we believe that paul is buried, and here's the change of saint paul and here's the papal altar and here's the Confessio where we believe that Paul is buried, and here's the change of St Paul and here's the papal altar and here's three other altars.
Speaker 2But that's about it and so it's just very, it's very, yeah, very powerful. Okay, so now we've walked 5.1 miles. That's been a long walk. We've rested a little bit at St Paul's we paid money to use the bathrooms there. And it's been a long walk. We've rested a little bit at St Paul's, we paid money to use the bathrooms there and now we're like, okay, we have to now go to St Sebastian.
Speaker 2Now, the neat thing about going to St Sebastian is that that is where Philip Neary I think, yeah, very much of the heart of Philip Neary can be united to because of his mystical experiences that he had there uh, can be united to because of his mystical experiences that he had there. So the walk from St Paul's to St uh Sebastian is about 2.2 miles. So it's about a mile. It was about an hour long uh walk to get there and the catacombs of St Sebastian. By the way, when we were there for world youth day, I was super excited because we had an amazing tour guide that was from America and I forget where he was from in America, but he was from America and he was really, really great. But the catacombs of St Sebastian are fantastic. There are hundreds of miles of catacombs under the city of Rome, and the catacombs of St Callistus are very famous as well. I would say probably the catacombs of St Callistus and the catacombs of St Sebastian would be like the top two that are most visited. Is that probably right?
Speaker 1Probably. There's Priscilla north of town, but most people don't go there. I would say you're absolutely right. Those two are probably the most frequented by tourists.
Speaker 2Yes, so the catacombs of St Sebastian are fantastic and the basilica up top is really really awesome as well. So there are the four major basilicas Peter Paul Mary by the way, that's where the band got their name from Peter Paul and Mary, peter Paul Mary, and then St John Lateran. Those are the four major, and then the three minor are St Sebastian, santa Croce and Jerusalem, and then St Lawrence outside the wall. So those three are right there and so, yeah, I always just tell people to take their time in the catacombs, because it's just such a powerful experience.
Speaker 2I don't even know how to explain if you've never been to the catacombs. There's so many different ways that you can be fascinated the fact that human hands did this with no excavation equipment, that they would have been scraping this out by hand, and somehow they dug all these underground caverns and you see all the niches on the wall where bodies would have been laid, and it's, it's.
Speaker 2It's such a fascinating experience, uh so I tell people to just take your time, breathe it in deeply and don't rush. Yeah, I love it. I love it. It's so many young men, by the way.
Speaker 1It's amazing from engineering and religion. Like you can have an amazing engineering marvel and then the fact that they were celebrating mass, like yeah, there's multi-levels. I think it's awesome.
Speaker 2Every time I go I have so many young men that have chosen St Sebastian as their confirmation saint and to have them there and to pray in the little chapel grotto area of St Sebastian is really powerful. Yeah, it's just really really neat. And then in the basilica the upper basilica of the church, they have a little shrine there of Quo Vadis church. They have a little shrine there of Quo Vadis, which is a chapel that you're going to then encounter on the next little journey. But the Quo Vadis Chapel is a small little shrine where St Peter, who was a coward and who denied our Lord on Holy Thursday night in Jerusalem Lord, on Holy Thursday night in Jerusalem he's now in the city of Rome.
Speaker 2Rome is burning down, the Christians are all being persecuted and Peter turns into a coward again. And so Peter starts running out of the city to save his life and he has a mystical vision of Jesus and Jesus is going into the city carrying a cross on his shoulders and Peter says Quo vadis Domini, where are you going, lord, quo vadis? And Jesus says I'm going to the city to be crucified again. And Peter's like, oh crap.
Speaker 2I did this once. I'm going to turn around. So Peter turns around and goes back into the city, is ultimately arrested and then crucified upside down, but in the church of the Zillow of St Sebastian. So it's believed that when our Lord appeared to Peter, that our Lord's feet were imprinted into the ground. Now, when you live, if you ever go to Rome, there are stories that are true and there's stories that should be true, and you should never make a distinction, ever. So these feet are on display and they're sticking awesome because it's Jesus' footprints. So you can like people are like I got Sasquatch and like Bigfoot that's stupid. These are Jesus's footprints. So you can like people like are like I got a Sasquatch and like a Bigfoot and like that's stupid. These are Jesus's footprints and they're they're, they're awesome. So you can see those. The real ones are in the Basilica of St Sebastian. They took them out of the chapel.
Speaker 2I don't know why they did, but they did, I think because the chapel is maybe the less secure because the chapel on the, on the road there where the Quavadi soup place, I think it's just like open all the time. I could be wrong, I don't know if that's really true.
Speaker 1It's a little dangerous to get there. It's a little less traveled, so it's nice to put them someplace where people can see them more often. Maybe yeah.
Speaker 2Yeah.
St. Paul's Outside the Walls
Speaker 2So, now, if you're from the North American college, we would stop after going to the Basilica of St Sebastian because we had had mass and we had walked two hours, two and a half hours, and it was time to eat. So we would always eat our lunch. Now, in the days of Philip Neary, he would encourage people to bring a picnic lunch with them, and it is believed that they would have picnic lunches outside of San Sebastiano. Now I don't know if that's really true or not, but I like to believe because it sounds really picturesque. We would go to an Italian restaurant called Cile Matt, um, which is, uh, just a small little Italian joint there, and we would make reservations and then the really pious knack seminarians that refused this would eat a sack lunch outside, um, because they were trying to do penance and, uh, they thought we were being foolish for eating outside. So, anyways, after our pranzo, we would then walk from St Sebastian or San Sebastiano to St John Lateran Now, st John Lateran.
Speaker 2This is a 5k, exactly 3.1 miles. So now, what's interesting about this is that I want you to think about what you do on Thanksgiving morning. You might go out and run a walk of 5k, run a 5k. So this is about an hour. If you're a runner, you can get it done in 16 to 20 minutes or 25 minutes, whatever, but it is 3.1 miles from St Sebastian to St John Lateran and it is a beautiful walk, particularly after you've had a great pranzo and you know it's great.
Speaker 2So, what's awesome about St John Lateran is that St John Lateran is the cathedral church of the whole entire world, so people really like St Peter's Basilica. They think it's really awesome, which they should. But St Peter's Basilica is not the cathedral church of the whole entire world. St Peter is just the mausoleum of the first Pope, st Peter.
Speaker 2St John Lateran is the cathedral church of the whole entire world, so it has the chair of the Pope, and this is the church that St Francis of Assisi walked to, from Assisi to have the rule of St Francis approved by the Pope, so there's actually a picture of that. Next to the chair, also inside this church, is a relic that's really powerful. It is the table that they celebrated the last supper on, so the first mass that were celebrated. That's above the tabernacle. So you have the chair of the pope, you have. This is the place where francis went, uh, to have the rule approved by pope urban, and then you also, I think, pope urban I could be wrong on that. I'm wrong on that I think, honorius honorius.
Speaker 1Yes, it's pope, honorius thank you.
Speaker 2And then it also has the table of saint of from the last supper from the upper room, because why would you not have that, um? And then they claim to have, um, bone fragments of the heads of both peter and paul in the altarpiece and of course they do, because why would they not? And then the other thing that's awesome about St John's is that all of the pillars in the church have an apostle in them. So the church is, when we talk about apostolic church, like the church is being held up by the apostles, and that's awesome. And then, above those images, are old testament images and new testament images, um, making typology references from the old testament, the new testament being fulfilled, and uh, it's just awesome. And the floor is amazing. Uh, it's just a fantastic church. It's a great cathedral. I mean, like if I was, if I was the pope, I'd be like man, you should make this a cathedral. It's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1Would you go back over there and live there again?
Speaker 2Would I go back over there and live there again.
Speaker 1No, if you were Pope, would you go back to John Lateran, because it's just this modern invention that the Popes live in the Vatican. I kind of want him to go back over to John Lateran, no I don't even want to answer that question no-transcript college.
Speaker 2Oh, okay, fair enough I could get some. Yeah, um, okay, I let's talk about some other things, about saint john ladder can you tell us who St John Lateran is Father? So St John Lateran is the Laterino family who donated the property, but it's actually consecrated to St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist.
Speaker 1So it's actually Don't pray to St John Lateran.
Speaker 2What'd you say?
Speaker 1Don't pray to St John Lateran. There is no St John Lateran.
Speaker 2But it's dedicated to St John the Baptist and St John the Evangelist and it has a very famous baptistry. Baptisms were not done originally in the church buildings. Baptisteries were like separate church buildings and there's a very famous one there which people like to go to. It's in the shape of an octagon for the eighth day, the day of eternity. So it's very exciting the eighth day, the day of eternity.
Speaker 2So it's very exciting. Now, very close to St John the Ladder, in fact, right across the street, is the Scala Sancta, which, if you're going to go to St John Ladder and if you're going to this pilgrimage, you need to absolutely go to the Scala Sancta, because those are, without a doubt, these steps that Jesus walked up and down on Good Friday when he was condemned by Pilate. And St Helen, who we'll talk about in a second, who was the mother of Emperor Constantine, had those stairs from the Praetorium disassembled in Jerusalem and shipped to Italy and they were installed in a church and you can go up them on your knees and it is powerful, and so I always do that, and I always tell everybody to do it, and it's amazing, and that is such a great grace.
Speaker 2There's also beautiful statues of Jesus being condemned at Jehovah and of the Garden of Gethsemane that are there, and there's a beautiful chapel with some ancient icons up at the top. So, scala Sancta, when you're facing St John Lattern, it's to your right. If you're walking out of St John Lattern, it's on your left, but totally worth going to Did.
Speaker 1I miss anything, I think you covered it. My favorite obelisk is outside St John Lattern too, because it's so old that Moses would have seen it, because the Roman emperors brought all the. They brought all these obelisks from Egypt to Rome and then the Pope put them in front of churches so that pilgrims could find their way to the different churches, and the one by St John Lateran, over by the baptistry, is the oldest one in Rome and I just think it's an incredible testament to Rome, to Christ, that, yeah, the faith endures.
Speaker 2I personally like the one outside of Santa Maria, sopra, minerva, that is on an elephant, but I do like all of us. We are fantastic. Okay, so then, after we visit St John Lateran and after, at this point, we have walked a long distance um, we have walked 10.4 miles.
Speaker 1Wow, okay, so I hope we're going someplace close now.
Speaker 2Oh my gosh, you were, so that was such a great lead in it. Cause this is less. Well, it's actually 0.6 miles, so it is just about a half mile. If you stop off and get a drink of water on the way over, then it won't even feel like a half mile.
The Catacombs of St. Sebastian
Speaker 2So just 13 minutes down the road is none other than Santa Croce in Jerusalem, which is the church which was constructed on the palace of St Helen. So St Helen is the mother of Constantine. She was Christian. Her son Constantine was not, and then Constantine had this vision. And then Constantine put crosses on the shields of his soldiers and then won a great victory and then was very partial to the Christians and on his deathbed was baptized, and his mother because Christianity was now legal made several pilgrimages to Jerusalem, where she brought back the holy stairs which I talked about earlier. She also brought back the cross that Jesus was crucified upon, and she brought an entire barge of dirt back from the Holy Land which she had her palace built upon, which is why it's called Santa Croce in Jerusalem, because the church of the Holy cross is built in Jerusalem.
Speaker 2But you're really in Rome, but you're in Jerusalem because this barge of dirt ended up randomly here in Jerusalem, and so she built the church on Jerusalem dirt in Rome. Does that all sound like I'm saying what you've heard before? Yes, I really am like a Rome tour guide, aren't I?
Speaker 1No, I love it. Yeah, you are. I fired our other tour guide so that you could be our tour guide. Remember I do. I love Santa Croce because it's so often empty it is really empty. We have the relics of the passion.
Speaker 2We're so dumb they don't know, because they have bad tour guys and because they're all italian tour guys, and they don't know um but no, the italian tour guys are great I love, I love irene um, she's my favorite italian tour guy, um, but anyways, um sonny virginia's lemme. So not only does it have the relic of the true cross, it also has, uh, thomas finger, which went to our Lord's side in his hands, it has thorns from the crown of thorns. By the way, the actual crown of thorns, of course, is in Notre Dame, but they have some crowns, they have some thorns there. They have the placard that was above Jesus' head when he was crucified. So just a lot of great relics for those of you who are relic fans, which all of you should be. So that's a big deal.
Speaker 2And they have a nail too right, oh, they have a nail, they have one of the nails. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they do have a nail, you're right, it's really powerful.
Speaker 2It. Yeah, they do have a nail, you're right, so it's really powerful. It's like, yeah, it's a, really, and the way that they have the relic set up, I think it's really prayerful as well, because it's like a place you can kneel, but you can also go up and look at the the relics real close, and then they have a beautiful shard of turin display, which I'm a sucker for the shard of turin because it's true and uh, it makes me happy, so I really think that it's awesome as well yeah and then there's a there's a local.
Speaker 2There's a local girl here there who's going to be a saint yeah, I don't think she's the parishioners. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's always good, yeah, and then the church outside is really beautiful, the just the basilica, because that's all like an old town, old chapel, yeah, and sometimes it's great because like mass is going on, you can just go and it doesn't matter you can just yeah, where they've put the relics is really nice, because you can have this prayerful experience no matter what's going on in the church.
Speaker 1Amen to that, yeah, okay. So we're done in Jerusalem and we're walking now to, oh my gosh, this is great.
Speaker 2So now we're going to go to the city of the dead.
Speaker 1Okay.
Speaker 2Yeah, so that might sound a little creepy, but don't worry, it's awesome. So now we're going to go for a 1.3 mile walk to San Lorenzo, uh, outside the walls, fury La Mura, uh, so San Lorenzo is the Basilica that um has has. There's a lot of churches in rome named san lorenzo. There's the church, uh, san lorenzo panisperna, where he was killed. Then they have san lorenzo, uh, that has the grills itself, and then this is actually where he's buried. So this is the burial place of san lorenzo. It also has, uh, saint stephen, saint justin, martyr, and pious the ninth ninth, yeah, so there's a lot of saints buried in this church and it's a big, huge, huge ancient church, very beautiful, and it's also right next to the Roman cemetery, which is the city of the dead, and in Rome they don't bury underground, they bury upground. So there are all these big, huge monuments and mausoleums where all these people are buried and their statues are powerful, and visiting the cemetery itself is also just very beautiful. They're powerful, and visiting the cemetery itself is also just very beautiful. And so, as North American College, we own a mausoleum for all of the seminarians or faculty that would die in the city of Rome and, you know prior to, like the convenience of air travel, they would just be buried there.
Speaker 2There's actually a very famous seminarian whose cause is open for canonization, frank Perriter, who I believe worked a miracle on one of my classmates, phil Kime, who should have been dead, and we prayed an Ovena to Frank Perriter and I went and had masses said there and he's alive. And so Frank Perriter if you don't know anything about him, he's really awesome. He consecrated his life and offered his sufferings up to the Sacred Heart of Jesus and I think Pius, pius X and he's one of the popes somehow found out about this kid and actually approved his act of consecration that he made to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. Look at all that, frank Perriter. He's buried in the mausoleum. I would try to get priests to say Mass out there all the time and I still believe that he's going to be a saint someday and I'll go to his canonization.
Speaker 2It'd be great because we're kind of friends.
Speaker 1But anyway so St Lawrence, outside the wall, it's very simple, like it's almost like the stark contrast between that and any of the other churches that you're going to go to yeah it's really neat yeah, it's a really unique church because it actually was two churches and they were facing opposite directions and so what they did was they put them together and so there's no apps in the back. That's just like one big rectangular church and they're kind of different levels and so it's just a really unique church and you have this powerhouse of like any permanent deacons or transitional deacons should go on pilgrimage here, because you have your, your deacon lawrence and your deacon stephen, and it's just like this powerhouse place that again, very few people yeah, very, very few people go there.
Speaker 2In fact, I had there was a young man that when I was sitting over in rome, it was his last day in rome and he was a priest and he wanted to have mass there and so we went out there for mass and we ended up saying mass at the, like, the principal altar, which is like 10 feet up, like the, the sanctuary is on a big, huge, huge platform. Yeah, it was beautiful and there was no one there. No one even came in when we were saying mass. It was like we were saying mass at a private chapel, even though we were in one of the basilicas it's a beautiful church.
Speaker 1It was also bombed by the allies in World War II. We bombed it and so there's actually they've kind of preserved some of the damage. On some of the columns they have an unexploded shell that was a dud in the courtyard and Pius XII famously went out there to comfort the civilians that were affected. So it's a really historic place. It's one of my favorite churches and no one ever talks about it.
Speaker 2You know, what's also important about this church is the fact that this is where the exorcist of Rome has his office, and I don't know if he but like.
Speaker 2So, Father Vince Lampert became the voice of exorcisms in the United States of America. He was every podcast that there ever was. I don't know if he was on your podcast, but if you just like Google Father Vince Lamper, he'll come up on every. He wrote like multiple books, but he took his classes there when he was mentored by the exorcist of Rome. But that's where he would go every day. He had an office there and people would line up by the exorcist of Rome, but that's where he would go every day. He had an office there and people would line up that needed exorcisms. So it's also kind of a cool place in that way, and visit the city of the dead.
Speaker 2Okay, so then, once you visited St Lawrence, outside the wall, you've got one place to go, and there's always a great place to crown everything. We shall crown her with many crowns. So, uh, you're going to take a 1.4 mile walk, which is about 40 minute walk, to none other than santa maria maggiore, and santa maria maggiore is the church dedicated to the blessed virgin mary in the city of rome, the Esquiline Hill. Am I pronouncing that right? Yes, and after the Council of Ephesus, when they declared that Mary was the mother of God, there was snow on August 8th and the Pope Sylvester, august 5th.
St. John Lateran's Historic Significance
Speaker 2August 8th and the Pope Sylvester, august 5th. August 5th, pope Sylvester took his crozier and he traced the outlines of the Basilica in honor of Our Lady, and somehow someone else saw it, because when the snow melted, they still know where to build the church, and it is a spectacular church. It's very famous now, of course, because Pope Francis chose to be buried in a doorway there, next to the chapel of Salvos Populi Romani, which is a icon that was painted by St Luke, who is the evangelist and an artist, once again proving that creative people should do their thing, and it also has the body of St Matthias in it. It also has the crib of Jesus from Bethlehem in it and the gold on the ceiling is from Christopher Columbus, who discovered America or however you want to say that in 2025, but the gold came from America and is on the ceiling there.
Speaker 2And yeah, it's just a beautiful, beautiful uh church Lots of like, yeah, you could spend half hour, 45 minutes just looking at the doors onto this church, powerful images and yeah, so that's church number seven, the Blessed Virgin Mary.
Speaker 1That's quite a day.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's quite a day. I mean, you're exhausted. At this point You're just like where is the gelato?
Speaker 1Yeah, that's a good segue. Do you do the seven gelato walk immediately after the seven church walk, or is this another day?
Speaker 2Okay, so I just quick. Yeah, so the seven church walk is real and I had done it for you know for however many years I was there and I don't know my last year. I was trying to, you know, be fun and have fun. So I decided that I was there, and I don't know my last year. I was trying to be fun and have fun, so I decided that I was going to host the first ever seven gelateria walk and it would be a walk to the seven best gelaterias in the city of Rome and I had flyers and I advertised it and I think I had five people that joined me and out of 180, that's okay, father Tom Siddig was one of them. Nice, I had some people that joined me for just like a few of them, but they thought the whole idea was kind of crazy.
Speaker 1You walk it off. You're hungry by the time you get to the next place.
Speaker 2I will tell you that was not really the case. It was painful. Okay, it was painful, but it was so worth it and I'm so glad that I did it. But yeah, we were all over the place we went to. We went to the old bridge over by the Vatican. We were at the place by Campo de Fiori that I loved.
Speaker 1I think that was the first one we went to.
Speaker 2It was the one by Campo de Fiori, and we went by one by the Spanish Steps oh wow, so you walked a decent amount to this. Oh yeah, it wasn't just like seven average a lot to realize it was like, straight up, we had to make it real, yeah and um, yeah, it was uh, it was terribly good. So I think we should incorporate walking into everything. So seven grocery store walks, seven, just find seven things and walk to them.
Speaker 1Why not seven? Well, as we conclude, father, first of all thank you for your introduction. Like we're just scratching the surface, on these churches too, there's so much more we could say about each of these churches, so, but thank you for beginning to introduce us to it. If someone said, why should I go to Rome? Like, like you're talking about these churches, but I have church down the street Jesus is down the street why why Rome? Why would you tell someone to go to Rome?
Speaker 2Well, first of all, I do want to affirm the fact that right down the road is Jesus in the Lospice Sacrament. You probably should go there and ask him if he wants you to go to Rome, so that's actually really important. However, going to Rome is really important because the relics of the saints are there, and so I think praying with relics is powerful. I also think the church architecture is really, really powerful, and seeing the beauty and the history of the church is really powerful. What I said at the beginning is true, but I learned just as much just from being in the city of Rome that I learned in the classroom. So you can learn a lot of theology and a lot about saints, about the history of the church and about what we believe just by studying art and architecture, and I think they're a huge untapped resource, and so, granted, we can just all like look at it, be like, wow, that's nice, and then walk away, but we can also look at it with an inquisitive heart like who is that?
Speaker 2saint. What did that saint do? What did that saint? What impact that in the church? Why does this look this way? You have to do the work, but I think it's worth it.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I love the idea, like the walking pilgrimage not everyone who goes to Rome obviously can do the seven church walk, but this idea that that travel and that walking and that putting our whole being into that it's not just checking off a list, but that we're going to these holy places and praying and and walking and using our bodies to pray, and I think there's just something.
Speaker 2So I'm a I'm a runner by trade. It's what I do. I cross, I coach across the new track. I love to run and I tell people that if you can run and go to one of these cities because the best way to see a city is actually running it's not on a bus, it's not in a taxi, um, and walking is great, but jogging and running is even better. So, like, go to the seven churches, run, uh, that would be amazing. You know, run 14 miles and see seven of the world's greatest churches, like fantastic, right, yeah, and then you probably could go to the joel atarias afterwards, um, yeah go to chichile metella the night before to carbo and then do the seven church run I think we should plan it.
Speaker 2Stracciatella, I think, is the name of the famous pasta they have stracciatella, stracciatella, something like that. I know I'm pretty smart yeah, so that's great.
Speaker 1Well, thanks, father. Do you have anything? Final words, any last things?
Speaker 2oh, if, you're going to rome, do the seven churches. I tell people actually like, if I am taking like a parish pilgrimage to the city of rome, like I always just make sure that that's like our itinerary, so we're going to see the seven rangers, like this, because, yeah, worth it yeah, yeah, even if you can't walk them, even if oh yeah.
Speaker 1Yeah, you know you're still a lot of people can't walk them, but that's yeah, I've never walked them in one day, so they've just given me something for my bucket list joan go to rome, because you can do it all in one day, like that's the whole point yeah so you just go a day earlier yeah, okay, I'm gonna put it on my list boom done it's like the but in a city right and that's the's the thing. 15 miles a day, that's kind of like your basic Camino day.
Speaker 2Yeah, it's not the end of the world. It's like a mini marathon.
Speaker 1Yeah, I could do that.
Speaker 2It's not that bad.
Speaker 1And you break it up. Yeah, yeah, you break it up with prayer.
Speaker 2And gelato.
The Church of the Holy Cross
Speaker 1And gelato and Cecilia Metella. Well, thank you Father, thank you listeners. Share this with somebody. Listeners who might be thinking about going to Rome might need that extra nudge. Share this with them so that they make that decision to go to Rome if it's God's will.
Speaker 2Yeah.
Speaker 1Sounds fantastic. God bless listeners. Thank you, father Peace. Do you want to experience this historic event in the life of the church for yourself? Whether you want to take a group or you're just an individual looking for a trip, verso Ministries can make that dream a reality. Visit versoministriescom slash jubilee for all our jubilee dates and for more information.
