Eastern Point Retreat House is beautiful. "The walls are layered with prayer" they say. I say so is outside.

[Just photos for now -- check back later this week and I'll put a bit of text about the really edifying and challenging New Ways Ministry Symposium on Catholicism and Homosexuality.]

Back home and still needing to study and sleep. But here are 11 or so more shots from the Eternal City. Enjoy!


An almost-missable but definitely unforgettable streetside mosiac of Mary on Via dei Serpente.

I'm powerless in the face of texture and Rome is positively dripping with millennia of it. (And three more layers of it under your feet!)

Best view we non-über-early-arrivals had of the Pope was on the video screens.

Though I was punctual enough to get a seat with a straight shot down the aisle! (The Swiss Guard uniforms remind me just a bit of when I met Ray Charles and his bodyguards were wearing matching purple suits that I swear he had picked out.)

€130 for the Swarovski crystal rosary is about US$170, about the same as two weeks of good food for the people begging outside the Vatican Museum, where this photo was taken.

Grazie! is an extraordinarily cheerful brand of toilet paper made from recycled paper (hence this mascot tree's grateful gesture).

On the way to San Clemente I came across a little wildflower-strewn greenspace on the other side of what I thought was a very photogenic lock.

A stocky Italian man who had climbed up a balustrade to photograph his companions on top of the cupola of St Peter's Basilica was kind enough to do the same for me.

Michelangelo cleverly designed a curving tilting staircase in his dome for St Peter's -- meaning you can make your vertigo- and claustrophobia-inducing way up to the cupola by climbing between the exterior dome and the interior mosaics.

An angel's hand from the mosaic on the ceiling of Michelangelo's dome.

Insalata Romana, at Vitto's -- a sidewalk cafe and bakery serving since 1884.

No time for prose. Should be sleeping. Or studying.

Great time here in Rome.

Jamie and her friends are fantastic hosts.

Of course I'm eating well. Taking pictures and even working out at the gym.

Wednesday morning I've got a (small) chance at a (large) audience with the (mixed-reviews) Pope.

More later.