There is something about Rome that has always stirred my soul, ever since my first visit there as a nine-year-old on a parish pilgrimage. Indeed, I am of the view that if Rome does not stir something deep in a person, then they are probably not firing on all cylinders.
Last summer I sat in the courtyard of an historic Italian villa overlooking Rome, built centuries before the advent of air conditioning and elevated enough to avoid the sultry heat of the Eternal City’s streets and squares at that time of year. I was alone at the table because I had a two-thirds-smoked cigar in hand and was carefully conducting a relight so as to extract maximum enjoyment from this great gift of God’s creation. I once read that GK Chesterton had a habit of saying a kind of grace before smoking a cigar, and I have long been inspired by his habit of making the sign of the Cross with his smouldering matchstick as, the top of the cigar aflame, he was poised to enjoy the first puffs of a well-rolled stogie.
