E-Mail Journal - "An American Seminarian in Italy"

Wednesday, 11 August 2004

Dear Friends,

It is now two weeks since I left America to study for the priesthood in Rome. After an overnight flight I arrived Thursday morning in Rome. I moved into the North American College which will be my home while I am here. Built on Vatican territory, it houses between 160 and 180 men. The building is huge and shaped like a big 'P' with a fountain in the eye of the P. I have a room on the fourth floor, on the east side; I watch the sun rise over the center of downtown Rome. I have to climb about 12 flights of stairs to get there because there are three floors before the first floor (R, T, and a floor known as -1). It took me a while to figure out the elevator buttons.

Saturday I dook a train to Assisi, the town famous for St. Francis. It is still a small town. It is the Italian state of Umbria, a light of gently-rolling hills, ancient country towns, and crazy saints. The distance is always misty. Some mornings, clouds have covered the valley so heavily you can't see a thing. In the afternoon it either rains heavily or it is very hot. Assisi stretches across the side of a hill with St. Francis' basilica on the West and St. Clare's on the east. Today is St. Clare's feast, so I skipped class and went to a very beautiful, long Mass in her honor at the basilica. It was beautiful. I particularly liked the trumpet escort when we processed from the piazza to the basilica. The men wore traditional garb, which included a fine hat, tall brown boots, and tights with the right leg blue and the left leg red (the town colors).

I study 6 hours a day (9-12, 2-4) at an international language school. My class has three American seminarians, an American priest, two postulants who will soon be brothers (one from France, one from Sri Lanka), a Franciscan brother from Poland, a religious sister from Croatia, two Japanese girls, and an Hungarian. I am sharing an very nice apartment with a roomate from Brazil. We end up speaking a form of Italio-portuspanish, but we manage to communicate well.

It has been a whirlwind since I began packing for Italy. It is nice to be able to slip into a slower routine. I hope you all are well. I basically sent this e-mail to everyone whose address I had handy. Please forward it to people I missed (Mary, I didn't have the YNIA kids' e-mails). I always feel a little uncomfortable writing mass-messages, especially long ones with pictures, so if you want to continue getting such messages, please send me an e-mail. I miss you guys and I am praying for all of you in the mornings at St. Francis' tomb. Pace e Bene (peace and blessings), as Francis would say.

In God's family,
) () (- (_

"The pleasure of Italy comes form living in a world made by man, for man, on man's measurements." - Luigi Barzini