On Pilgrimage

Italy is the canary in the coal mine for the West...and it's not looking good.

Live look at the European family die-off.

The host you receive at mass at the Vatican is different from the somewhat stale communion wafers you get at mass in California. It’s a much more refined taste. It’s smaller, more delicate, and practically melts in your mouth. It tastes like it just came out of the Vatican ovens and cooled on the counter as Angels sang to it.

This was only one of the wonders I discovered on my summer pilgrimage to Italy during the Jubilee. I traveled all over Italy in my youth, and visited the Vatican twice, but this was my very first time here as a Catholic, which made it extra special; but also poignant. The Italians perch atop the most extravagant pile of Western cultural treasures on the planet, and yet they have ceased to take the steps require to shepherd this legendary patrimony safely into the future.

Why? There are no children.

Roman Holiday

I’ll start with the good news. Rome and the Amalfi Coast are absolutely jammed with tourists, large groups of young people on pilgrimage from all over the world, and, of course, Italians. Recession? What recession? People—mostly Americans—are ready to paper Italy in Ameribux in order to achieve the European summer holiday of their Instagrammable dreams.

Shockingly, prices in Rome are low. Multi-course dinners for the whole family are under 100 Euros, while a similar dinner in Los Angeles would set me back half a mortgage payment.

In Rome, seminarians, nuns, and priests from all over the world are strolling around like the rest of the tourists. My son ran up to a seminarian on the street and asked him to hear his confession, but of course, he couldn’t since he wasn’t ordained yet. Across the Tiber from the Vatican, we stopped at a tiny pizzeria and every table was filled with Italian teens in their school pilgrimage t-shirts, accompanied by two priests and a nun.

We had lunch near the Coliseum in billion-degree heat deep inside a cavernous, air-conditioned restaurant. Within minutes of our arrival, a huge Chinese church group showed up. Their leader led them in prayer before their prix fixe meal.

Rome on Jubilee Mode is, well, jubilant. St. Peter’s was, as always, filled with people.

We got to go through the Holy Doors—here is the crowd going through them:

Deep inside, we wandered past the Bernini altar. As we arrived at the apse, mass was just starting. They warned us if we went in we were not allowed to leave for the full hour.

We rushed in and took our seats on the half-filled pews. Beyond the velvet rope, large masses of tourists took photos and videos of us at mass. We were captives in the Catholic People Zoo, doing Catholic People things. We were animatronic Catholics on the Vatican Ride at SaintPetersland.

But really, mass there was special. I couldn’t believe where I was. For reference, we were here, behind the Bernini altar:

But the pews were only a third full even though there were thousands of people milling about. Attendants wouldn’t let you enter the mass area unless you pledged to stay for the full hour, so hundreds of non-massgoers waited behind behind velvet ropes, gawking at us and taking videos and photos.

My family was the only family at this small mass in this otherworldly, mind-boggling setting. My children were the only ones in the pews.