Filling the Pews

ROME, JULY 20, 2006 (Zenit.org).- Fewer and fewer people attend Sunday Mass in Italy, or so they say.

While Mass attendance has certainly dropped over the years, the image of Rome's nine hundred churches sitting empty is just plain wrong. Many local parishes have lively Mass attendance and work hard at keeping young people in and around the church.

At my own church of the Protomartyrs, the 10 a.m. Sunday Mass is standing room only and the other five Masses throughout the day are well attended. The draw isn't the music, nor the coffee and doughnuts; it is the untiring efforts of the parish priests to keep every one involved with the church.

I spoke to our parish priest, Don Carmelo Giarratana, about getting people to come to church.

Don Carmelo (In Italy "Don" is used in place of "Father" for addressing diocesan priests) has been at the Church of the Protomartyrs since 1990. Born in Sicily, he was ordained 42 years ago in the midst of the Second Vatican Council. Don Carmelo told me that the spirit of renewal during Vatican II shaped his life as a diocesan priest.

"I see the role of the priest as among the people," he explained. "From when I first began parish work, I visit the families at their homes, I go to the parks where the kids hang out and to the snack bars where workmen eat their lunches. I try to be in touch with as many people as possible." As anyone living in the area can attest, Don Carmelo practices what he preaches. He is a familiar figure on the local scene.

With only 8,000 families, the Protomartyrs is one of the smallest parishes in Rome, yet also a very active and lively one. The parish organizes a Eucharistic procession for the Feast of Corpus Christi down the main thoroughfare of Via Gregorio VII, with hundreds of faithful walking down the street singing and praying.

A few weeks later for the feast of the Protomartyrs, the parishioners go to Vatican City and walk in procession around the Vatican gardens where Nero's circus once stood. Don Carmelo explained that, "The Vatican hill is where the first Roman martyrs died, where St. Peter was crucified. Where else would we go?"

Don Carmelo has done everything in his power to put the church at the heart of community life. The church sits at the end of Via Innocenzo XI, dominating the road. "On the right we have our social services center and on the left there is the playground and the sports fields," says the parish priest, "but in the center, there is the church."

"The door is always open here," affirmed Don Carmelo "Daily Masses are offered several times a day and the church is ready to welcome anyone who wants to just stop by."

One striking thing about the parish is the availability of confessors for the sacrament of reconciliation. Whereas back in the U.S., confession is often "by appointment only" or during a forty-five minute time slot on Saturday afternoons, here the sacrament of penance is offered every day and several confessionals at a time are at work on Sundays.

To meet all the needs of daily Masses, confessions and spiritual direction, Don Carmelo recruits priests from all over the world, offering them hospitality if they are in Rome to study or simply asking visiting priests to come help out. He has seven priests assisting at the parish, four Italians as well as priests from the Philippines, Poland and Brazil.

Don Carmelo takes as his model Pope John Paul II, whom he met for the first time in 1975 in Krakow. "John Paul II went out among the people to bring the church to them, on a much larger scale of course. I'm just following his example."

Over the years, Don Carmelo and Pope John Paul developed a fast friendship, due in part to Don Carmelo's project to involve the parish in missionary work in Belarus. Every year, 30 Belarusan children come to Rome and stay with parish families and the parish is building schools and orphanages there.

Like Pope John Paul II, Don Carmelo shows special attention to young people. "Kids receive their confirmation and then don't show up in church again until they want to get married," explained the priest. "The Belarusan project helps keep kids around, as counselors or hosts or just to play ball in the soccer court, so it helps on both fronts, evangelizing both here and there."

"The Good Shepherd doesn't hang around the sheep fold waiting for the sheep to arrive," concluded Don Carmelo. "He goes out there and finds them wherever they may be."

* * *

While Frenchmen and Romans alike gathered at the French embassy on July 14 to celebrate Bastille day, a few blocks away at the church of St. Mary Magdalene, souls gathered to celebrate another kind of heroism.

July 14 marks the feast of St. Camillus de Lellis, patron of the sick, healthcare workers and hospitals, and his remains are buried at the church of St. Mary Magdalene.

Born in 1550, St. Camillus' early years were inauspicious to say the least. A compulsive gambler, he habitually dissipated his pay as a professional soldier on cards and dice. After he lost his sword, uniform and gear to gaming, he was reduced to begging on the streets. An abscess on his foot brought Camillus to the hospital of St. James of the Incurable in Rome. There, his foot found only temporary solace, but his spirit was cured. In 1575, he became a lay brother of the Capuchins; in 1584 he was ordained and in 1586 he founded the "the Fathers of a Good Death."

The charism of Camillus' order was to care for the poor and ill. Furthermore, the members of his congregation took a vow to devote themselves to the plague-stricken. They didn't limit themselves to hospital work, but went out into the world looking for the sick. The order's first martyrs of charity died in 1588, when they boarded a ship quarantined off Naples for plague, and nursed the dying until they themselves succumbed to illness.

St. Camillus died in 1614 in the convent attached to the church of Saint Mary Magdalene. He is buried in a splendid urn under the altar in the right transept. On his feast day, the reliquary containing his heart is placed on the altar and special Masses are offered for the sick.

Anywhere there were sick and suffering, the Camillans could be found. On battlefields or in the wake of disasters, the sight of their dark habits emblazoned with red crosses brought relief and hope to the sick and wounded.
Camillus revolutionized the care of the sick by treating the incurable, the disfigured and the suffering with love and tenderness. He brought a smile to the sickroom even when his own physical ailments caused him great pain. In seeing in every ailing patient the person of Jesus, Camillus de Lellis gave a far deeper meaning to liberte, egalite and fraternite.
* * *
In Rome, wood is so rare as to be considered precious. Wooden floors are considered a luxury in a city where, for over two thousand years, people have built in brick, marble and concrete.

A new exhibition at the Capitoline museums of wood sculptures from Russia serves as a reminder of how essential humble wood is to our daily lives, as well as our spiritual ones.

The show features sixty wooden carvings loaned by the great museums of Russia. The works range from pagan idols from the era before Christ to elaborate icons from the eighteenth and nineteen centuries. The show will be open for the rest of the summer, until August 27.

In Russia, with its vast forestlands, wood was a central and sacred element, providing shelter, warmth and tools as well as amulets to ward off evil. An extremely rare object, the fragment of a wooden idol dating from the second millennium B.C., is one of the first objects displayed.

Pagan masks and imaginary creatures are arranged in the first room. They are simple, dark and unadorned to represent not only the superstitious religions before Christianity, but also the role trees played in the history of salvation. The tree of the knowledge of good and evil and its forbidden fruit was the catalyst in the fall of man.

The next works, by contrast, are brightly painted and highly decorated. Wood, having been glorified by Christ's redemptive sacrifice, takes on a new beauty. A stunning panel of the Virgin of the Passion from the 17th century shows Jesus shimmering in gold leaf against the dark robes of his mother.

Christian Russia used wood to recall the tree of life, the cross by which Jesus redeemed mankind. The oldest carved "deesis," or supplication scene, is on display in the exhibit. From the thirteenth century, this panel adorned the "iconostasis" or screen separating the church sanctuary from the nave, and represents a line of saints praying to the crucified Christ.

The show continues with an array of objects from elaborate processional crosses to little "traveling churches" -- four small folding panels to create an iconostasis which merchants or soldiers could carry on their journeys.

The last rooms contain representations of apostles, martyrs and saints. They represent the branches and fruits of the mystical tree. Imagery of St. Nicholas abounds, as he is one of the patron saints of Russia, but unlike the usual images of the saint holding three purses of gold, the Russian St. Nicholas bears a sword alluding to his role as defender of Christianity.

The most unusual works in the show were life-size sculptures of Christ seated in prison after the scourging and the crowning with thorns. They were placed in niches in churches where the faithful could contemplate Christ alone and incarcerated, awaiting the crucifixion.

For Romans who are used to thinking of wood as precious for its rarity, this exhibit invites them to reflect on its role in the history of man's salvation.

Don Carmelo and St. Camillus . . .

Makes me think of a similarly-named priest . . . Don Camillo, the ex-pugilist priest with hands like hams and a heart of gold . . . another one of those seemingly-at-the-time random things that set me on the Road to Rome . . .

That is a 500 pound bomb that somebody left on Don Camillo's doorstep . . . tied up in a pink ribbon and labelled "Happy Eester". He picked it up (with a great effort) and carried it step by step across the town square to the Communist Party Headquarters, lifted it overhead, and tossed it onto the front step, announcing loudly, "Returned to sender. Easter is spelled with an "a". Correct and redeliver."

Rough translation . . . "My hands were made for blessing, Lord . . . but my feet?" Whereupon Don Camillo lands a kick like a thunderbolt on the Communist Mayor, Peppone. And Peppone says, "Thanks, I've been expecting that for the last five minutes."

Interesting read, NYer. My husband grew up in a parish where you routinely had the priests over for coffee, or dinner.They came over to Bless the house, commiserate if someone was laid off, prayed over the sick. It's still a very active parish.

Years ago, most of the local parishes in my largely Catholic area, had a similar tradition. I'm told many of the priests who served here years ago were locals or friends of locals and had many relatives in the area to keep the tradition alive. It seems to have all but died off with certain changes made to 'modernize' us in the early 90's, but still continues with those who have relatives in the area.

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