Different church sites show one community

Local visiting By Patricia Kasten Compass Associate Editor While the Diocese of Green Bay does not have station churches like Rome, there are certain sites that Catholics might want to visit as a Lenten or Holy Week pilgrimage. Additionally, Sr. Mary Bride Grubbs, diocesan chancellor, suggests that people might like to honor an Easter Monday tradition of visiting churches in honor of the disciples' walk to Emmaus. Sites of local devotional interest that are open during the day include: • St. Francis Xavier Cathedral (use north entrance), 139 S. Madison, Green Bay; • The Chapel of Our Lady of Good Help, (the diocesan shrine), Cty. K, Robinsonville; • Holy Cross Church, (site of the oldest occupied rectory in the diocese), 3009 Bay Settlement Rd., Green Bay; • St. Norbert Abbey Church, (contains the National Shrine of St. Joseph in the church crypt), 1016 N. Broadway, De Pere; • St. Joseph Church, 404 W. Lawrence St., Appleton. • St. Mary Church, (originally designed as a cathedral church) 442 Monroe St., Oshkosh. Many other churches are open for prayer; please call ahead to check for hours.

VATICAN CITY -- Members of a Vatican academy have launched a new effort to attract Italians to an ancient Roman tradition currently more popular among the city's English-speakers.

Lent
• Lent-related articles  • 2003 Lenten Wish List (3/7 issue)  • Lenten rules (2/28 issue)

Between 100 and 200 English-speakers gather for a 7 a.m. Mass each day during Lent at a different "station church" in the city.

Assigning a Rome church to a set day during Lent goes back to the fourth century, when the pope would move around the city, celebrating Mass in different churches during Lent and on holy days as a sign of the unity of all the city's Catholics.

Underlining church unity was extremely important to early popes, said U.S. Jesuit Fr. John Baldovin, a visiting professor of liturgical history at Rome's Oriental Institute.

"We talk about unity and go to great lengths to explain it; they walked it," he said.

The station churches offered "the tangibility of the sacred" and the direct experience of being united around the bishop of Rome, Fr. Baldovin said.

The tradition died out early in the 14th century, although the Roman Missal continued to list the station church for each day during Lent.

In the late 1940s, members of the Pontifical Academy Cultorum Martyrum, which encourages scholarship about ancient Roman churches and catacombs and promotes the veneration of martyrs, revived the practice of gathering for Mass each day at the designated church.

In 1959, Pope John XXIII began his Lenten observances at the designated station church, celebrating Ash Wednesday at St. Sabina's on the Aventine Hill. Popes Paul VI and John Paul II continued the first-station practice.

The pontifical academy, which hosts a 5 p.m. Mass in Italian and Latin at each station church, is trying to get more of the city's residents involved in the entire Lenten itinerary.

Unless the local pastor publicizes and pushes attendance, the Italian congregations tend to number a few dozen people each day, said Alberto Migliorini, an officer of the academy.

"Americans in Rome are keeping a Roman tradition with greater fidelity than the Romans," he said.

But that could change now that he and four volunteers have launched the academy's Internet pages on the Vatican Web site and are publicizing the station-church practice.

The pages include the list of station churches and information about each building's history, its art and architecture and often a spiritual reflection.

The pages were launched in Italian in mid-February; the academy hopes to have the English and French translations posted before summer.

With the exception of the papal Mass on Ash Wednesday, the largest daily Masses in the station churches are the early morning liturgies coordinated by the North American College, the U.S. seminary in Rome.

North American College seminarians and staff, U.S. priests living at Casa Santa Maria, lay students and English-speaking religious set out in the early morning to a different church Monday through Saturday from Ash Wednesday to Wednesday of Holy Week.

Thanks mainly to connections with North American College students and alumni, the station-church practice is becoming known in North America as well, said Fr. Thomas P. Olszyk, a priest of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee studying in Rome and serving as the 2003 station-church coordinator.

Tour operators have asked for the schedule and pilgrim groups are planning to join in, he said.

"They know this is unique to Lent, so they want to make the effort," he said.

While attending the stations involves rising early and either walking or dealing with Rome's public transportation, "it is more a pilgrimage than penance," Fr. Olszyk said.

When the sun shines, a Roman morning can be glorious, and a station day is one of the few days of the year that some of the churches are open to the public.

Add to that the intensity of Lent, the experience of moving around the city praying with a diverse group of English-speakers and the coming of spring, "everything just meshes," he said.

The pontifical academy's Internet pages may be found at: www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_academies/cult-martyrum/index_it.htm.