Roman Churches Under Snow

Here’s something you literally don’t see every decade: snow in the Eternal City that lasts long enough to be photographed! Rome is less than a full degree of latitude south of Boston, but the climate is so much milder that the city is about as capable of handling a major snowfall as Los Angeles or Nairobi. All the schools were closed, so a lot of people took the morning and brought their kids out to the parks and piazzas, making for a really joyous carnival atmosphere. The snow was the most perfect kind of weapons-grade sticky, and many battles were waged throughout the city; Roman children, however, are completely unpracticed in this fine and subtle art, and tend to make Soviet-style projectiles that are effectively too heavy to launch. In Piazza San Pietro, American and English seminarians showed them how it’s done. (Courtesy of Mr Jacob Stein, via his blog Passio XP; more photos at the link.)

From our Roman pilgrim Agnese, the church of San Lorenzo in Miranda, and the Roman Forum.

San Luca e Martina, and the forum of Julius Caesar.

A unique snowman made by Mr Lucas LaRoche, a seminarian at the North American College.

A Barbiconi collar was sacrificed to make this Snow-Pope, the work of Mr Joseph Sigur. (Photo by Fr Kevin Staley-Joyce, also of the North American College; see more at his excellent Instagram account.)

From Fr Dominic Holtz of the mighty Order of Preachers (which did NOT cancel classes at the Angelicum today), some views from the roof. Here are the markets of Trajan, with the Colosseum off in the distance.

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St Peter’s Square, 1956

Our thanks once again to Fr Alex Schrenk, a priest of the Diocese of Pittsburgh, this time for sharing with us this marvelous photo of seminarians of the North American College having a snowball fight in St Peter’s Square. The exact provenance of the photo is unknown, but the date would be in February of 1956, when Rome experienced its heaviest snowfall since 1796. Many of the national colleges in Rome had a distinctive design for their cassock, the wearing of which was, of course, absolutely mandatory at all times; that of the North American had blue buttons and piping, and a red fascia, but was only used by students. (The use of such cassocks for formal occasions has made a bit of a comeback in recent years, and not just at the NAC.) Even without the fascia, the fact that they are enjoying the snow, and not desperately huddled around a radiator somewhere inside, clearly marks them as Americans.

NAC Diaconal Ordinations in St Peter's Basilica

Each year, the Pontifical North American College in Rome holds diaconal ordinations in the Basilica of St Peter at the beginning of October. It is always a particularly festive occasion, since many of the families take the opportunity to make a pilgrimage to the Eternal City, so they can are present for their son’s ordinations. This year, they were joined by a number of American prelates who are in Rome for the Synod on the Family. The ceremony was held on the morning of Thursday, October 2, and forty-three men were ordained by His Eminence Donald Cardinal Wuerl, Archbishop of Washington, D.C. The NAC, as it is colloquially known, has a huge flickr account with over 260 albums of photos, and has posted a whole series of albums dedicated to the ordination, and the events of the days leading up to it, with well over a thousand photos. These are all the works of men who are currently studying in Rome and living at the College; among the photographs of the ordination ceremony itself, there are also several nice ones of the interior of St Peter’s. Our congratulations to the newly ordained deacons; please remember to pray for them as they complete the studies that will lead them to priestly ordination at the end of this school year. (All photographs in this article are reproduced here by kind permission of the PNAC Photo Service; no. 1, 6 and 7 by Kyle Mangloña, no. 2 by Bill Van Wagner, no. 3, 4, 8 and 9 by Michael Lund, no. 5 and 10 by Daniel Hart.)

Prayer vigil with the families of the ordinandi at Sant’ Andrea della Valle 

A vigil held in the college itself the night before the Ordinations

Dalmatics ready. (full photoset set here.) 

 

The Gospel of the Mass (full photoset of the Mass here.)

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JT on: Rooms Reclaimed at the North American College

Via The Deacon's Bench, the North American College in Rome is welcoming its biggest class in 40 years. Sixty-one seminarians have arrived. When the other join them in mid-October, the combined enrollment will be 208 seminarians. For the first time in the postconciliar period, rooms that have long been used for other purposes have been reconverted into student rooms. "Those rooms have been reclaimed," says Msgr. Robert Gruss, vice rector for student life. And they are being trained in the ordinary and extraordinary form of the Mass, using the Parish Book of Chant as a music resource for both forms.

Originally found out about this from H-o-C, and more information is here.