Hello again, Everyone! Today, we started out at the
beautiful Moscow Patriarchate Church of Saint Catherine. We were blown
away, it was so lovely! The building is finished and they have several
of the Icon paintings finished on the walls. They also have a relic of
Great-Martyr Catherine. Their choir is quite lovely, too. There were 3
bishops there. Two of them were named Antony and Nestor, and the third
one had a name that started with an A, but I cannot remember what it
was. There seemed to have been a special celebration going on, besides
the usual feast day. On our way back to the
Metro after Liturgy, we passed by Saint Peter's Square and noticed that
there was a significant crowd gathered there, so we went into the square
to see what was happening. To our pleasant surprise, there was an
awning and a banner at the Pope's apartment window, and I noticed the
text of the Angelus on the monitor screens around the square, then I
remembered...the Sunday noon Angelus! We were there just in time! The
Pope gave a short sermon in Latin and Italian then led the Angelus.
Afterwards, he briefly addressed the crowd in several
languages...French, English, German, Polish, and Italian. I took video
of the Angelus and part of the English part of what the Pope said, plus a
little more. I hope it comes out! After that,
we went to Via Appia. We were hoping to get into the Catacombs of
Santo Callisto, but they were closed for 2 weeks. We did visit the
lovely little Quo Vadis church, where, according to legend, Saint Peter
stopped to ask the Lord where He was going. There is a place on the
church floor that is said to have the footprints of Saint Peter. I was
especially interested in two large paintings on either side of the
altar...on the right, the Crucifixion of Christ is depicted, and on the
left, Saint Peter is shown being crucified upside down. The two
paintings face each other. We are planning to
go to bed early tonight, because we have a 6:45 a.m. train to catch
tomorrow morning to Naples, from where we will take the Circumvesuviana
train to Pompeii and Herculaneum. There might be some rain, but we hope
that just keeps the excess tourists away and does not interrupt too
much of our exploration of those two fascinating places. I'll
most likely give a run-down of our adventures tomorrow after we get
back. Ciao! Anna
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