My parish church in Rome

One of the great joys of my life has been to spend nearly 14 years living in Rome, first as a student and then as Rector of the Venerable English College. I suppose the best way to know a strange city is to walk everywhere. As a student, I rarely took public transport and would remember at night my day’s walk, piazza by piazza, church by church, from Pantheon to Forum to Colosseum. Those years were in many ways a delight and I can honestly say, only slightly tongue-in-cheek, that I learnt nearly as much from viewing the city of Rome as from my studies in the Gregorian University.

Nowadays the responsibilities of being a cardinal may seem to outweigh its pleasures, and visits to Rome are usually on administrative matters; but there is one particular source of delight which never fails: the visits I make to what is technically my ‘parish church’ in Rome.