We took the metro early one Sunday morning to the Vatican so that Jay could see the magnificence that is St. Peter’s Basilica. As we passed mile-long lines of people waiting to get into the Vatican Museums, and even several hundred in queue just to enter the church itself, we saw smoke, heard music. And there, coming up the main street, was a Señor de los Milagros procession by Peruvian members of a Spanish-language church in Rome. Ladies in mantillas, walking backwards, systematically dispensing clouds of incense. Then honor guards bearing banners embroidered with images of Christ on one side, his mother the BVM on the other. (You can just make out the Blessed Virgen on the back of the main banner there.) Then this marching band, which, for trumper-player Jay, was more thrilling than any dome, colonnade or baldacchino could ever be. Wonderful surprises at every turn here in the Eternal Città.
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