Basilica
of the Immaculate Conception Pilgrimage to Italy
From the 20th to the 29th
of October, Fr. Ryan Humphries of the Minor Basilica of the Immaculate
Conception in Natchitoches led a parish pilgrimage to Italy. The trip was managed by Magnificat Travels of
Lafayette, which deserves immense credit for a virtually flawless ten
days. Here is a short account written by
pilgrim Kent Hare, professor of history at Northwestern State University in
Natchitoches.
A year-long preparation, both physical (for a lot
of walking) and spiritual (through prayer, fasting, and confession), finally
ended very early on Monday, October 20, when approximately thirty Natchitoches
pilgrims assembled at St. Mary’s School for Mass at 3 am in the morning,
immediately followed by a bus ride to Dallas.
There we met up with the Magnificat representative who would accompany
us for the pilgrimage, Alexis Darbonne.
A quick flight to Atlanta united us with about a dozen individuals from
south Louisiana who would join us – as well as what appeared to be a plane full
of other groups of pilgrims and at
least a dozen priests and religious
who boarded the flight to Italy with us.
We felt very safe on that flight!
The overnight flight deposited us in
the Rome airport bright and early, soon after sunrise on Tuesday morning the 21st. Who cares if it felt like just after
midnight? It was time to set off for
Assisi! We boarded our bus for the next
nine days, meeting the amazing driver Luigi (I swear, Luigi could negotiate
that tour bus through the eye of the needle!
Without a scratch!) as well as our Italian escort, Debra Mallinson (who
was not Italian at all, it turns out, but rather a British expatriate married
to an Italian). Debra commenced a
narrative that literally did not stop for the next nine days, immersing us in
the culture and deep religious history of Italy. It was charming.
We drove across the stunning
countryside from Rome into the hills of Umbria to Assisi, seeming to go back in
time to the medieval world of Sts. Francis and Clare. We immediately saw the wisdom of Magnificat’s
urging that we prepare ourselves physically in a steep, brisk, uphill walk from
the bus park at the bottom of the city to our hotel – learning quickly that
everything in Assisi is literally uphill.
Both ways! A quick chance to
check into the Hotel Giotto was followed by the beginning of the spiritual
component of our pilgrimage with a short ride back to the Basilica of Saint
Mary of the Angels in the valley by Assisi.
There we heard our first daily Mass in Italy and marveled at the first
of many beautiful, ancient churches we would see. Like just about everything else we would
encounter, St. Mary of the Angels is of immense historical significance. In this case, the existing 16th-century
basilica completely encloses the famous Porziuncula, the little, delapidated
ninth-century chapel which St. Francis restored, in which he and his first
followers created the Order of Friars Minor in 1209, and where he would a few
years later receive Clare into the religious life and thus begin the Poor
Clares. The aura of holiness was
tangible in that basilica.
As tired as we were at that point,
we nonetheless enjoyed an early (by Italian standards – only 7 pm) three-course
dinner back at our hotel before individually reflecting on our first day in
Italy and collapsing into our beds.
… Whence we sprang early Wednesday
morning for breakfast followed by another uphill walk, to the Basilica of St.
Francis, the headquarters of the Franciscan Order. Built into the side of a hill, this huge
basilica actually contains two churches – Upper and Lower – directly atop each
other above the tomb of St. Francis in the crypt below. Before a local tour guide, Marco, conducted
us through the complex, we heard Mass in the basilica’s “Peace Chapel.” Marco’s exuberance was infectious as he
explained the famous frescoes by Giotto and others, before leading us out and
up (of course) a long street to the plaza in front of the Basilica of St.
Clare. At that point, just after noon,
the group split up for a little free time.
In addition to lunch and shopping while exploring the town at our
leisure, many of us individually toured St. Clare’s and viewed the original
painted crucifix from San Damiano’s Church which famously spoke to Francis and
urged him to “Rebuild my Church,” as well as St. Clare’s incorrupt body. My wife and I were blessed to unknowingly
time the latter at just the right time to witness the Poor Clare nuns briefly close
the curtains in the viewing area and sing the afternoon Office. Absolutely beautiful. Late in the afternoon, those of our group who
wished (the majority, it turned out), made an optional excursion to San
Damiano’s Church itself, further up the hill overlooking Assisi. A statue of St. Francis sitting there,
looking off the bluff, epitomized the tranquility of the place.
Every day thereafter began and ended
the same – a hearty breakfast and a three-course dinner, with a barrage of
religious sites in between. Mass was
sometimes in the morning, sometimes in the evening. Thursday brought a day trip to the
picturesque town of Orvieto, built atop a flat volcanic butte a couple of hours
from Assisi. Inside the Duomo
(cathedral), we beheld a material relic bearing Our Lord’s Precious Blood, the
Corporal of Bolsena. In 1263, a
skeptical priest was stunned when the Host he consecrated began to bleed. Investigation of this miracle led directly to
the institution of the Feast of Corpus Christi the very next year.
Friday morning – too soon for most
of us – brought our departure from Assisi, traveling to Florence for one night
flanked by a busy afternoon and morning that gave us opportunities to go into
the Church of the Holy Cross containing the tombs of many famous Italians, see
Michelangelo’s magnificent David in
the Academy, tour the Duomo, and view many important works of Renaissance art
in the very epicenter of the Italian Renaissance, at the Uffizi Gallery. And then we were swept out of Florence for
long bus ride back to Rome, where our lodging, the Hotel Cicerone, was within
walking distance of St. Peter’s Square.
Our time in Rome began on Sunday
morning, October 26, with Mass in the sister basilica of our own minor basilica,
the Major Basilica of St. Mary Major, concelebrated in Italian by Fr. Chris
Decker of Baton Rouge. St. Mary Major is
the largest Marian church in Rome, and was built during the fifth century,
immediately after the 431 Council of Ephesus proclaimed Mary “Mother of
God.” We then went directly to St.
Peter’s Square, where at noon we – and hosts of pilgrims from all over the
world – were part of Pope Francis’ weekly Angelus service. In the afternoon, we traveled outside the
ancient city-walls of Rome to tour the Catacombs of St. Callixtus, artifacts of
the very first age of the Church, when the Faith was still outlawed and
persecuted, containing both tombs where some of our earliest Fathers in the
Faith once reposed and some of the
earliest Christian iconography. In the
evening, back in the city, we briefly toured the Pantheon, one of the most
ancient surviving buildings in Rome, from just before the BC-AD divide, a pagan
temple to all the Roman gods which later became a Christian church dedicated to
St. Mary and the Martyrs of Rome. Then
we were “let loose” in the Piazza Navona, one of the centers of Roman night
life, for our only evening meal on our own.
A group of about ten of us had dinner at an excellent open-air
restaurant to the sounds of a jazz band in the plaza. Of course, even there we had the opportunity
for more “religious tourism,” viewing the relics of the young Roman martyr St.
Agnes in her immediately adjacent church.
There are hundreds of churches in Rome, each of them with their own
fascinating significance. We could only
see a fraction.
Monday was largely given over to the
Vatican. First, we heard Mass in St.
Peter’s Basilica – actually two Masses, according to our preferences: most heard Mass in English, said by Fr.
Chris; a few heard Fr. Ryan say a Traditional Latin Mass at a small altar
within sight of the main Papal altar. It
was wonderful, moving beyond words.
Soon after that, we met our Roman
guide, Roberta, who would be with us for two days. She was quite good – a perfect balance of
knowledge and piety. From Michelangelo’s
Pietà, past various shrines, chapels,
altars, and tombs – including that of St. John Paul II – then out and around to
the Vatican Museums, a vast repository of artistic treasure culminating in the
Sistine Chapel. It was magnificent,
standing there beneath some of the most famous paintings in the world, knowing
that is where the Cardinals assemble in conclave to elect each new Pope.
Late in the afternoon, we visited
the third of the four Major Basilicas that were a major objective for our
pilgrimage to Rome – St. Paul Outside the Walls, perhaps the most visually
stunning of the churches we saw, with palm trees in the front courtyard and the
golden shimmer of mosaics on the façade that put me in mind of something out of
the Caribbean. The similarly
idiosyncratic interior has as one of its most notable features several ranks of
circular medallions high around the periphery, bearing the visages of all 266
Popes to date – and room for at least five more.
Our last day was a flurry of
activity that began at the remaining Major Basilica, St. John Lateran, the
oldest and first in rank among the churches of the West, the Pope’s own
cathedral in his capacity as Bishop of Rome.
In the Lateran Palace immediately adjacent, we were privileged to climb
the Scala Sancta, the very steps from the Praetorian Palace in Jerusalem that
Our Lord scaled after he had been scourged.
We did so according to indulgenced custom – on our knees. Many in our group found the experience the
most moving part of their pilgrimage. We
then visited the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Jerusalem, venerating several
relics of the Passion including fragments of the True Cross brought back to
Rome by St. Helena, mother of the first Christian Emperor Constantine the Great
just after AD 300. Our early afternoon
lunch break was near the Trevi Fountain (under restoration, unfortunately),
then we visited the Colosseum before walking to our final church – and final
Mass in Rome – at the Basilica of St. Peter in Chains. There we saw Michelangelo’s famous “horned” statue
of Moses.
That long final day culminated with
the “surprise” with which Debra had been teasing us for several days. It was a Farewell Dinner hosted in Le Terme
del Colosseo (“The Baths of the Colosseum”), a great arched hall that was once
part of the water system for the Roman baths adjacent to the Colosseum.
Which was cool enough in itself – but then a trio of singers swept out and
serenaded us before the first and every other course of the best Italian dinner
we had, with plenty of wine to go around. Everyone had a great time,
including Fr. Chris who ended up joining the show!
Starting very early the next
morning, Wednesday the 29th, a similarly uneventful series of bus
rides and flights saw us home by the early hours of Thursday the 30th. Truly, this pilgrimage went off without any
hitches, far more smoothly than could be reasonably
expected. All involved in its organization, preparation, and facilitation
deserve our most sincere thanks: from Fr. Ryan Humphries who conceived
it, to Ashley Hebert to whom he said “Put together a pilgrimage to Rome,
Assisi, Orvieto, and Florence” soon after he hired her as the Minor
Basilica’s director of evangelization, to Magnificat Travel which Ashley found
and worked with in bringing together the details – Maria Tegre who runs it and
Alexis Darbonne who accompanied us – to Fr. Chris Decker of Baton Rouge who
accompanied us with his pilgrims from south Louisiana, and in Italy Debra Mallinson
our escort and our amazing driver Luigi. And of course, the pilgrims as a
whole, who quickly formed a small faith community all our own. We left Louisiana
and assembled in Italy as friends, acquaintances, or even strangers, and ended
up family. No one came back unchanged.
Speaking only for myself, I will treasure the memories of Italy 2014 all
my life.
Pictures and Captions that were submitted:
The Basilica of the Immaculate Conception pilgrims at St. Peter’s Square, Vatican City. Front row L-R: Becca Rodriguez; Charlie Vienne; Ethan Wold; Scott Wold; Dennis Gordon; Jason Methvin; David Stamey; Burley Johnson; Foy Melder; Raymond Chauvin; Wayne Waguespack; Larry DeBlieux; Kent Hare; Hulen Rodriguez; Buddy Giering – Row 2 L-R: Manuel Lopez; Nita Doughty; Rosemary Troquille; Jessica Rodriguez; Linda LaCaze; Sharon Gordon; Christa Rodriguez; Donell Adams-Welch; Brenda Stamey; Cecile Hymel; Cynthia Johnson; Eva Coleman; Patsy Melder; Donna Loustaunau; Adele Scott; Jane Chauvin; Anne Hare; Melanie Johnson; Rebecca DeBlieux; Carol Green; Ashley Hebert; Beverly Giering; Zella Lopez; Kathy Hollier; Rita Fontenot – Back Row L-R: Roberta (Roman guide); Lisa Johnson; Debra Mallinson (Italian escort); Alexis Darbonne (Magnificat representative); Fr. Chris Decker; Fr. Ryan Humphries – Missing: Rick Johnson; Denise Johnson
Fr. Chris Decker of Baton Rouge and Fr. Ryan Humphries of Natchitoches at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. (Picture provided by Brenda Stamey)
Anne and Kent Hare by a statue of St. Francis in Assisi. The turtledove is real. (Picture provided by Anne Hare)
Brenda and David Stamey in Florence. (Picture provided by Brenda Stamey)
Carol Green with Becky and Larry DeBlieux in a gelato shop. Gelato! Mmm! (Picture provided by Anne Hare)
Fr. Chris Decker of Baton Rouge (at right) concelebrating Sunday Mass in
Italian in the Basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. (Picture provided by Brenda Stamey)
Cindy and Burley Johnson with Anne and Kent Hare at Ristorante Tucci,
Piazza Novona, Rome. (Picture provided
by Brenda Stamey)
Fr. Ryan Humphries celebrating Mass at the Altar of St. Peter Healing
the Lame Man in St. Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City. (Picture provided by Ashley Hebert)
Fr. Chris Decker being shaved by the Barber of Seville, La Terme del Colosseo, Rome.
Those who made it possible: Fr. Ryan Humphries, Roberta (our Roman guide),
Alexis Darbonne of Magnificat Travel, Debra Mallinson (our Italian escort),
Ashley Hebert, and Fr. Chris Decker.
(Picture provided by Anne Hare)
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