Rome is putting on its best autumnal face as Synod-2018 opens. The days are full of high, blue skies, sunshine, and warmth without humidity; the evenings are pleasantly cool. A friend noted this past Sunday that the city seems less graffiti-ridden than in the past, and while the usual chaos prevails on the streets and sidewalks, the alert visitor never loses the sense of walking along the pathways of more than two millennia of history, even when dodging cars and motorini. When the pasta is al dente, the pollo arrosto is in the wood-burning oven, the wine is flowing freely, and gelato con fragole is on the horizon, it’s easy to forget that Italy is essentially ungovernable, that Europe and indeed the entire West is in a crisis of democratic conviction, that the United States is displaying many of the characteristics of a banana republic – and that a lot of the Catholic Church is, to put it gently, stressed out.
9:29 AM
Letters from the Synod-2018: October 3 – As the Synod opens...
Reports and Commentary, from Rome and Elsewhere, on the XV Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops
Xavier Rynne II
15 min read
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