The Final Stop—But This Story Isn’t Over Yet!

At twenty past eight I was shaken out of a very deep sleep in which I was dream­ing that I had just won a marathon (some­times the sub­con­scious doesn’t bother with sub­tlety in its imagery) by Andrew telling me that I was sleep­ing through break­fast and had bet­ter get up. We had cof­fee and hot milk, bread and fruit and cook­ies with our hos­tel hosts, till finally around 10 stag­gered out the door and into day 70, the very very last day of the offi­cial pilgrimage.

First we stopped at San Anselmo, since Roger is good friends with a Bene­dic­tine who teaches there a few months every year (though he wasn’t cur­rently in res­i­dence). Then we mean­dered over one of Rome’s 7 hills—they are pretty small hills, I have to say—until we came to a ridge that let us look over the Cir­cus Max­imus, momen­tar­ily occu­pied not by char­i­ots and horses but by cam­ou­flaged planes and other pieces of large mil­i­tary equip­ment on dis­play for what seemed to be an army fair. Up Via San Teodoro and we found an organic foods fair—enjoyed some sam­ples while we were at it—and then tried to find a way into the Roman Forum. We seem to have gone exactly the wrong way to get to the entrance, though there were sup­posed to be some where we walked, at least accord­ing to my guide book. All the same we got a nice look at the frag­ments of Roman civ­i­liza­tion. Pretty darn impres­sive after all these years and numer­ous sack­ings of the city!

Then, as time was slip­ping by, we marched across the medieval sec­tion of Rome, now chock­ablock with jew­elry and wicker and lamp shops and other odds and ends, back across the Tiber, and almost into the wel­com­ing arms that form the colon­nade around the Vat­i­can… except that were were blocked by what we con­ser­v­a­tively esti­mate to be 120,000 Ital­ian teenagers stream­ing away from an 11 a.m. papal mass. We had planned to grab a bite to eat before our Necrop­o­lis visit, but there seemed to be really no time to push through the mass of peo­ple and still make our appoint­ment. So we sent Zeke off with Roger and Ginny one last time to have lunch (meet­ing up with Vince and Sally) while Andrew and I raced on for our tour.

But the pil­grim­age decided to throw one last high-speed chase at us. We took a side street up to the Piazza San Pietro and started hunt­ing for the free bag check, which our ticket for the exhi­bi­tion promised for Andrew’s over­sized back­pack with cam­era equip­ment. It didn’t bother to men­tion, though, that you’d have to wait two hours on line with all the other peo­ple wait­ing to get into the Basil­ica if you wanted to use that ser­vice. We wouldn’t be allowed in the crypt with the back­pack, so we had lit­tle choice but to race to the sand­wich shop that we had decided to skip in the first place to leave the back­pack behind, try­ing the whole time to get Roger on the phone and fail­ing. When we found our clan we threw our stuff down, grabbed bread and moz­zarella prac­ti­cally out of their hands, choked it down as we ran back up, and then began our sec­ond fran­tic search for the Holy Office Gate, vaguely iden­ti­fied as being “on the left.” It was finally the sight of the Swiss guards in their com­i­cally stripey out­fits that got us on the right track. We were informed we had to wait 7 min­utes and 5 sec­onds before we could enter. We duti­fully did so.

When our time was up we marched into the Vat­i­can, picked up our real tick­ets, and in short order were ush­ered into the back­side of the museum where the Scavi tour begins. We headed down a stair­case to the Necrop­o­lis, which really was a city of the dead back in the Roman pagan times: the ceme­tery was above ground with a main street down the mid­dle, each plot hav­ing its own front door and win­dows, painted walls on the inside with urns and mosaics to keep the dead happy and com­fort­able in the life to come.

As our tour guide explained, when Con­stan­tine decided to build a basil­ica in the tra­di­tional loca­tion of St. Peter’s bones, he had to pacify the pow­er­ful pagan fam­i­lies by promis­ing not to knock over their ceme­tery. Instead he just filled it all in with dirt. More dirt and more walls went in dur­ing the 16th cen­tury ren­o­va­tion. The only rea­son it’s been lit­er­ally unearthed today is because Pope Pius XI left in his will the wish to be buried next to Peter, so Pope Pius XII ordered archae­ol­o­gists to ascer­tain whether, in fact, Peter was below the main altar of the basil­ica, as the tra­di­tion had it. Incon­ve­niently this all hap­pened in 1939, when a cer­tain nation to the north had an unholy inter­est in reli­gious arte­facts, so only 5 archae­ol­o­gists did all the dig­ging in secret, at night, remov­ing some­thing like 40,000 cubic meters of dirt and dump­ing it in the gar­den out back—that was a plau­si­ble excuse for the sud­den appear­ance of all that dirt, appar­ently. A great deal more ancient stuff lies beneath the Vat­i­can than can be exca­vated with­out the whole basil­ica cav­ing in, which must be a bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment for Roman archae­ol­o­gists now, though it does give free rein to the imagination.

And yes, at the very end of our tour, we did see with our own eyes what we have every rea­son to believe are some frag­ments of Peter’s bones, found in a tiny shrine behind very ancient graf­fiti stat­ing in Greek “Pet­ros eni”—Peter is here. Var­i­ous sci­en­tific tests con­firm that the bones belonged to a strong male who lived to be between 60 and 70 and died in the 1st cen­tury; all the bones belong only to this one per­son, with no other bones around, unlike other spots in the Necrop­o­lis. There are other good details too: we couldn’t bring the cam­era in for pic­tures, but you can take your own vir­tual tour on the Vat­i­can web­site and see and hear the story for yourself.

So we fin­ished our pil­grim­age as we’d hoped, vis­it­ing the tombs of Peter and Paul, sym­bol­i­cally rep­re­sent­ing for these past 500 years the Catholic and Protes­tant churches respec­tively. The apos­tles had their dif­fer­ences but they both gave their lives as mar­tyrs for their Lord in this same city of Rome. We pray that our com­mon witness—martyria in Greek—can bring Catholics and Luther­ans together too, despite their differences.

On the way out we got to glimpse a few more papal tombs, includ­ing that of John Paul II, and ducked into the Basil­ica itself with­out hav­ing to spend hours on line for a quick look at Michelangelo’s Pieta. Luther would’ve seen the cur­rent St. Peter’s only in its begin­ning phases, as work had begun on it just a few years before his visit.

When we came out, though, it was time for a big good­bye. Roger and Ginny had to get back to camper and camp­ground tonight for an early start tomor­row on the trek back north and in a few days their flight back to the U.S. We’ll actu­ally see them again a week from tomor­row, but after 35 days together with all the adven­tures we’d had in the great white whale, whether good or bad, it was a bit­ter­sweet moment. We cer­tainly couldn’t have man­aged this with­out them. Their pres­ence along with us has been a huge blessing.

Well, after all that we were pretty worn out, so it was another pizza din­ner and then back on the over­stuffed sub­ways back to our hos­tel for another night, really truly done now with our ecu­meni­cal pilgrimage.

But the story isn’t over yet! We have an extended “post-pilgrimage” of sorts going on for another month, so please stay tuned! Tomor­row we’ll visit the Ger­man Lutheran con­gre­ga­tion in Rome that always cel­e­brates Ref­or­ma­tion Sun­day ecu­meni­cally with a Catholic preacher. Mon­day we’re fly­ing to Ger­many for a cou­ple days in Wit­ten­berg, teach­ing a group of 15 Lutheran pas­tors from around the world in an annual 2-week sem­i­nar spon­sored by the Insti­tute for Ecu­meni­cal Research in Stras­bourg together with the Lutheran World Fed­er­a­tion. A few days after that we’ll head home just briefly before fly­ing to the U.S. on Nov. 7 for a month, includ­ing our pre­sen­ta­tions at Augs­burg Col­lege, Lenoir-Rhyne Uni­ver­sity, and Roanoke Col­lege. Our very last gig will be at the Uni­ver­sity of Hei­del­berg on Dec. 6 where Andrew will speak at a con­fer­ence on “Sus­tain­able Mobil­ity for the 21st Century”—after two months and more walk­ing in a world not built for pedes­tri­ans, he’ll have quite a bit to say to the subject.

So if you’ve been enjoy­ing our trek so far, please check back reg­u­larly for the next month. As Yogi Berra so insight­fully put it, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Mary Emerling Young says:
October 31, 2010 at 2:27 pm
Con­grats. You will def­i­nitely have some­thing to tell your grand­chil­dren and beyond. Every­day I tuned in to live vic­ar­i­ously along the way. Will miss
your pil­grims progress. Have you thought of writ­ing a book? Your pic­tures are amaz­ing. Best to you. Mary
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