BEAUTIFUL
ITALY
BEAUTIFUL
ITALY
On the 'Ponte Vecchio' in
Florence - the oldest bridge in Europe
Our two-week Italian pilgrimage took us on a journey across the Apennines and along the Adriatic coast of this beautiful country, through the regions of Tuscany, Latium, Apulia and Umbria to the cities of Siena, Florence, Rome, San Giovanni Rotondo and Assisi. It took us on a journey into another culture, language and way of being, as we made another journey in friendship and another way of being as twenty-five pilgrims in a foreign land, and yet a further one on both the individual and collective level in prayer and reflection, and another way of being in Christ.
It is not possible to come away from a pilgrimage unaffected. Visually, Italy presents one of the most renowned landscapes.
Our drive through the Tuscan hills and valleys, among the Chianti vineyards and olive groves, through poppy fields, the snow-capped Apennines, the elegant and imposing cypress trees, and the sweeping Adriatic coast had its own place.
And
the art and architecture from Etruscan and Roman to Renaissance and Baroque,
from Brunelleschi's Dome in Florence to Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel at the
Vatican, to the Basilica of San Francesco in Assisi with its famous Giotto
frescos ..... what another place! And then walking and praying where Catherine
of Siena, San Pio, Francis of Assisi and Saint Clare lived and walked and
prayed. It was in the end, a deeply affective experience.
(Michele Ayoung-Chee)
Lining up for the Sistine
Chapel tour
Pentecost Sunday in St Peter's Square