By Deacon James N. Dunbar
ROME — For Seminarian Riley Williams and colleagues at the Pontifical North American College, Lent did not begin with receiving ashes in the warmth of the seminary chapel, but with a long, cold walk in morning darkness down one hill and up another to the fifth-century basilica, the Church of Santa Sabina.
The trek on Ash Wednesday, February 17, renewed the Lenten tradition of the pilgrimage to visit the “station churches” — the ancient churches of Rome — which began nearly 1,500 years ago.
A church was designated a “station church” because of its prominence in early Christianity or because it was constructed on the burial site of a saint or martyr in the early Church.
According to Church history, long-ago popes would travel with the laity to a different church in the city each day during Lent for Mass, making a pilgrimage from one stop or station to another until Easter.
For Williams, in his third year of theology, and his fellow 225 seminarians from the North American College — the U.S. seminary in the Eternal City — “the walk down from Janiculum Hill to St. Sabina’s, a Dominican Church and one of Rome’s ancient churches for a 7 a.m. Mass in English, took about 30 minutes,” Riley told The Anchor in a telephone interview.
“The weather ranges from between 40 and 50 degrees these days, so it wasn’t too bad,” he reported.
This is the 35th annual Lenten revisit of the pilgrimage that finds the seminarians in the old tradition each day of Lent except Sundays.
“Every weekday we will visit one of the old churches and attend Mass celebrated by a different priest from the seminary, and the Mass servers, lectors, and other volunteers are all from the seminary,” Williams explained.
The second day of Lent found the young men studying for the priesthood at St. George’s Church in Velabrum.
“It amounted to a 45-minute walk … and when we go to a major basilica like St. Paul Outside the Walls, which is across the city, it will take us up to an hour,” he noted.
For Williams, whose home parish is Our Lady of the Assumption in Osterville, the pilgrimages have a special meaning. Last fall, he spent four months organizing the updating and republication of “Procedamus in Pace: A Lenten Guide to the Station Churches of Rome,” which gives an historical overview and lists the religious and architectural highlights of each of the station churches.
Around the year 600, Pope Gregory the Great standardized the list of station churches and decreed on which day of Lent they would be visited. The goal was to strengthen the sense of community among the members of the Church in Rome who had endured many centuries of hardship and persecution.
The pilgrimages had been abandoned for hundreds of years when Pope John XXIII asked that it be revived in 1959.
A graduate priest, Father James R. DeViese Jr., of the Diocese of Wheeling, W. Va., is in charge of arranging for the priests who will celebrate the daily Mass, and Williams is director of the volunteers and in charge of arranging for the personnel, sacred vestments and vessels for the Masses.
“In making these journeys to various churches around the city, we are joined not only to the saints who lived and died there, but also by the innumerable multitudes who have worshipped in these same places,” said Williams.
“The North American College seminarians take up a collection during Masses and choose a special charity each year,” Williams said. “It amounts to approximately $5,000.”
“The 2010 station-church collections, will be sent to Haiti to help rebuild the Archdiocese of Port-au-Prince’s seminary, which was destroyed in January’s earthquake,” he added.
Since 1975, when The North American College began organizing its own pilgrimage, members from the English-speaking community of Rome have been invited to participate. This year, hundreds of laypeople and religious and priests joined the seminarians for the Ash Wednesday Mass.
Msgr. James F. Checchio, rector of the college, was the principal celebrant, and was joined by approximately 150 concelebrating priests.
“It has come a long way since I was a seminarian there,” said Father Jon-Paul Gallant, pastor of St. Therese of the Child Jesus Parish in South Attleboro. “But I remember how we were all pumped up by it.”
“I was a student at The North American College from 1974 to 1978 during which the tradition was reinstated, and it was fairly limited with only 10 or 12 seminarians taking part,” Father Gallant recalled.
“I remember how dark and cold it was making the early morning walks, and it amounted to some sacrifice, because those who made the walks had to forgo a hot shower and hot water to shave with, which finances had limited to morning hours,” he added.
“But when I returned as a priest-student in 1985, things had greatly changed, and there was an estimated 100 students making the Lenten pilgrimages; and as a priest I had the privilege on one of those Lenten days to be the principal celebrant of the Mass in St. Peter’s Basilica,” he said.
“While it wasn’t at the papal altar, it was just behind it, at the Altar of the Chair, and what was so great a memory is that I celebrated Mass on February 22, which is the feast of the Chair of St. Peter, Apostle.”
Contributing to this story was Father Matthew Gamber of Catholic News Service.