Reflections from our Rome Correspondent

CALLED’s Nina Santos Laubach at Vatican City

Greetings from Rome and the Vatican! 

From the first billowing of black smoke on Wednesday, to the celebratory cheers, songs, and chanting on Thursday for Pope Leo XIV, I am renewed by the reminder of the kind of community that is possible in our Church: hopeful, collective in Spirit, diverse in experiences, unified in action, and prayerful.  

I took a break from the crowds on Friday and found my way to the Basilica of Santa Maria of Minerva across the river from the Vatican. It’s a stunning church with vaulted dark blue ceilings. The altar houses the tomb of St. Catherine of Siena. Visitors and candles filled the prayerful space inside. And as with many churches in Rome, this basilica opens out onto a plaza.  This plaza was home to an elementary school, a few restaurants, and at the time I was there, a seemingly houseless man asking for money at the entrance steps.  As I stood just  inside the open doors, sunlight poured onto the tiled floor, and the quiet prayers of the people in the pews were faintly heard ahead of me. I could also hear the children’s shrieks of delight while kicking the ball in the plaza, clanking of the dishes at the cafe, and the poor man’s request for money and food all mixing together.  The inside and outside of the church were inseparable.  

My prayer for us as a community, under Pope Leo’s leadership, is that we believe and hope in a Church that is limitless in how and where we encounter Christ. Let us be a Body that prays, encounters, dialogues, delights, serves, and flourishes with its doors wide open… this is a living Church for today and tomorrow. May it be so!

-Nina

Basilica of Santa Maria of Minerva