ARTICLES
April 2004 ARTICLES
Contents © 2004
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
L.A. On The Tiber
Roamin' Catholic in Rome
BY CHARLES A. COULOMBE
For Catholics, Rome is the capital city -- more than Sacramento or Washington ever can be. In February I had the opportunity to go to Rome again. I visited the obvious places: St. Peter's, with the tomb of the first pope; St. John Lateran, with the table of the Last Supper and the nearby Scala Santa (it is an experience to mount, on one's knees, the same stairs Jesus went up to face Pilate); St. Mary Major with its parts of Jesus' crib; and many more. But I also visited places that tie the archdiocese of Los Angeles with Rome -- the churches that have belonged to our three cardinal archbishops.
Residents of the archdiocese of Los Angeles often think of our archbishop, Cardinal Roger Mahony, in purely local terms. He is the head of the Church in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties. As metropolitan of the province of Los Angeles, he retains a certain judicial jurisdiction over the dioceses of Monterey, Fresno, Orange, San Bernardino, and San Diego. Moreover, Cardinal Mahony is a mighty figure in both political and ecclesiastical circles beyond his province.
But in addition to these roles, Cardinal Mahony is also, by virtue of being cardinal-priest of the church of the Four Crowned Martyrs (Quattro Coronati) in Rome, a leading member of the clergy of that city; and as such, a papal elector. According to diplomatic protocol, His Eminence ranks as an equal with the princes of royal houses (the phrase "prince of the church" is not merely symbolic). He might properly be addressed as "My Lord Cardinal," or even "Most Eminent Prince" -- although in the United States, driven as we are by purest equality, these titles are rarely if ever used. But Roger Mahony has not been the first Los Angeles archbishop to hold these titles. We have had three cardinals since 1953: James Francis McIntyre, cardinal-priest of St. Anastasia; Timothy Manning, cardinal-priest of Santa Lucia a Piazza di Armi; and, of course, Cardinal Mahony.
The term "cardinal-priest" reveals the inequalities among the college of cardinals, which is divided into three groups: bishops, priests, and deacons. Cardinal-bishops are usually about seven in number and are usually high curial officials who occupy one of the nearby (suburbicarian) dioceses clustering around Rome. Cardinal-priests, usually holders of various archdioceses or dioceses, occupy one of the titles (tituli) -- these were originally about 70 of the oldest parishes in the city, but their number has expanded greatly since 1958, in keeping with the explosion in the size of the college of cardinals. Cardinal-deacons are generally titular archbishops or bishops. Cardinal Mahony's status as cardinal-priest emphasizes the special relationship between this archdiocese and the Holy See.
Crossing the Piazza San Pietro late one night with friends, I looked up and saw the lights still burning in the papal apartments. What the tremendous weight and loneliness of the papal office must be hit us all strongly then, and we said an Ave for the pope. While dining at a national college, I met a curial official who sees the pope daily. On hearing that I was from Los Angeles, he said (in a somewhat displeased tone), "oh, yes, your cardinal made Rupert Murdoch a Papal Knight." We went on to chat about the cardinal's close relationship with such important figures as Murdoch, Richard Riordan, and Lew Wasserman. The talk turned to such matters as the grand jury investigation regarding the priestly scandals in the archdiocese, and it was heartwarming to see that goings-on in our far-off corner of the world were not without interest in Rome.
But it occurred to me that no pilgrimage would be complete without visiting the three churches which had served as Roman seats for the three cardinals of Los Angeles. The first of these would be St. Anastasia, which was Cardinal McIntyre's titular church.
The church stands on the Piazza Sant' Anastasia, a quiet square with little traffic, just off the Palatine Hill. Cardinal McIntyre had some exceptional predecessors as pastor there -- most notably St. Jerome (d. 420), Doctor of the Church and translator of the Bible into Latin.
Today, the titular priest of Saint Anastasia's is Godfried Cardinal Daneels, archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels, appointed in 1983, shortly after Cardinal McIntyre's death.
As I wandered this beautiful building, I looked for any hint of our former archbishop's role there. Against the apse was a throne, carrying in mosaic his coat of arms -- half the angels' wings of our city, the other half the red dragon of the McIntyre clan. Under this was his motto, Miserere mei, Deus -- "Have mercy on me, O God." Amidst this beauty, history, pomp, and tradition, it reminded me of the humility of the man, who never let the trappings of his office make him forget the reason for it.
Cardinal Manning's church was Santa Lucia a Piazza d'Armi. Unlike the titles of either of Manning's predecessor or successor, Santa Lucia is a new church, the parish only having been created on September 30, 1938 by order of Pius XI. Erected in concrete in basilica style with three naves, it was established as a title by Paul VI in 1973 expressly for Cardinal Manning. In the period since then its sanctuary has been radically altered, with the tabernacle tossed off to the side, the altar rails taken down, a new table erected, and the corpus taken off the cross and sort of floating against the back wall. Whether or not our late cardinal had anything to do with these changes, it is a place that will seem familiar to visiting Angelenos after all the splendid churches they will have seen in the Eternal City. For those too impatient to wait for a pilgrimage, the church may be viewed on the parish's website, www.parrocchiasantalucia.it.
A mark, perhaps, of the Catholic Church's international nature is that three years after Cardinal Manning's death in 1989, Frédéric Cardinal Etsou-Nzabi-Bamungwabi, archbishop of Kinshasa in the Congo, was given the title. Born to a family of pagan tribal chiefs, he has presided over the chief see of that bloodshed-wracked nation since 1990. I could not help but think that prayers and donations in memory of his title's connection with Los Angeles would be a good idea.
All of that, however, is the past. Our current archbishop, as mentioned, is cardinal-priest of Quattro Coronati. The four crowned (coronati) with martyrdom -- Ss. Symphorianus, Claudius, Nicostratus, and Castor -- were sculptors, martyred in modern-day Croatia by drowning for having refused to worship the gods.
By virtue of our current cardinal's pastorate of the church, Quattro Coronati is, in a special way, "our" church in Rome. As you mount the rise up to the entrance, the complex looks much like the fortress Innocent IV designed it to be. You pass through two courtyards to reach the church door, an arrangement unique in Rome.
Above the entrance hang two coats of arms -- the pope's, as befits a basilica, and Cardinal Mahony's, as titular of the church. The left side of the latter bears its familiar angels' wings, the right side carries the cardinal's own symbols; scales, representing justice; roses for Our Lady of Guadalupe ; wheat and grapes for bread and wine; and a basket of bread for charity tell the wandering Angeleno that he is home.
Entering the church, if you turn around you will see more artwork over the doors. On one side is a picture of the pope. But, alone of all the titular churches I have visited (although it is an authorized practice), Quattro Coronati boasts a portrait of its cardinal-priest. There, to the left of the pope's portrait, hangs an oil painting of Cardinal Mahony, taken from a photo identical to that which hangs in his favorite restaurant, Far Niente, in Glendale.
To the right of the entrance of the church is the convent. There you will see two doors; next to one of these are a grille and a turnstile. If you ring the doorbell, a nun will appear behind the grille. If you ask her for the key to the Capella de San Silvestro, or Oratory of St. Sylvester, she will pass it through the turnstile. The other door, which leads into the chapel, is on the left side of the outer courtyard. The chapel has amazingly beautiful paintings, dating from 1246, of the life of Pope St. Sylvester, who reigned with Constantine in the early fourth century. The cycle of paintings -- the Legend of Constantine -- shows Constantine's baptism by Pope Sylvester. The chapel was reserved for private masses of the Holy Father and members of the Curia.
The Augustinian nuns of Quattro Coronati still dispense charity to the poor from their doorstep, a tradition that goes back several centuries. I attended their 6:30 p.m. weekday Mass and Vespers. The choir, grilled off from the nave, was soon filled without about fifty nuns in full habits. Mostly young Italians, I could detect a few Africans and Asians in their number. They all genuflected to the tabernacle as they took their places and seemed at once happy and reverent. Vespers were folded into the Liturgy of the Word; the Mass was in Italian, and communion was by intinction. I was one of three lay folk present.
On their website (www.santiquattrocoronati.org/), in which the basilica and its attendant monastic community are described in detail -- and a link to the L.A. Archdiocese's website is provided -- the nuns describe themselves: "We, daughters of Augustine, live in this basilica at the heart of the city of Rome where art itself sings of divine and human beauty in order to tell everyone how beautiful it is to live for God alone and that it is worth the sacrifice to give one's life for Him, a Father who has begotten us and who loves us, and who cries out today, as He did 1600 years ago to Augustine, 'clothe yourself anew in Christ (in love), return to your heart, there you shall find a space for life -- an inhabitable space of great depth -- where man is revealed to himself -- a space for true encounters.'
"Our monastic Community, attentive to the voice of the Church and to the spirit of Augustine, is always here in this basilica. In its presence and prayers this community makes its own the anxieties, the longings, the hopes of every human heart."
As I left Quattro Coronati on that February night (having dropped off an intention in their prayer box), it struck me that the prayers of these Augustinians, as of our own contemplative nuns -- the Carmelites of Alhambra, the Poor Clares in Santa Barbara, and Dominican sisters in Hollywood -- would go on for pope, for cardinal, and for all of us. We live in Los Angeles, while our hearts and loyalties are in Rome; but in eternity, these two cities are not far apart.