Home from home
GENOA is the most British of Italian cities, or so it asserted on one of the captions on an explanatory panel displayed in the Anglican Church of the Holy Ghost, marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee, and replete with photos of Her Majesty’s visit to the city in October 1980.
It is true that, even on my first visit there, three years ago, I felt strangely at home, but before last week I had never attributed that feeling to an innate British quality that lurked beneath the surface of what is, on any assessment, an extraordinary cityscape.
The town simply tumbles down a series of ravines and bluffs to come to a sudden sharp halt at the extensive curved waterfront. The juxtaposition of heights confronted by sea-level is considerably more pronounced than at, say, Naples, and I guess only a fantastic conflation of Brighton, Dover, Bristol, Liverpool, and Edinburgh could come near to giving the effect in a truly British context.
But Genoese architecture, with its heady mix of high medieval Gothic, Renaissance domestic grandeur, and a range of 19th-century decorative pastiches, is entirely sui generis. All suffered extensive shelling from the British fleet in 1944, including our own little Gothic Revival Holy Ghost (courtesy G. E. Street).
Unlike the cathedral, however, we do not have an unexploded bomb on display inside the church, and, also unlike the cathedral, we have not been fully restored to our former glory. Desperate measures need to be taken now to secure the stability of the fabric of this undoubted gem. The wonderfully committed congregation are moving heaven and earth locally to attract funds for the work.
But I am glad to report that they have by no means forgotten their other responsibilities. As I chatted to an architect about the project, the church officers busied themselves with practical steps to secure employment for a party of African immigrants who had turned up on the church doorstep.
If I had to commend any of our Italian chaplaincies for their spiritual energy and heartfelt practicality to a potential philanthropist (anyone out there?), it would be this one.
God save the Dean
STRADA NUOVA — New Street — is the most stunning of Genoa’s thoroughfares. It was new in the 16th-century as the mercantile aristocracy literally graduated from the medieval quarters nearer the seafront. Now pedestrianised, it offers a uniform Renaissance lavishness that is unrivalled in Italy. So different from the domestic aspect of our own dear New Street — Birmingham, that is.
Rome, and her contribution to Jubilee festivity, however, was much enhanced by the lavish Second City presence and preaching of the Dean of Birmingham Cathedral, the Very Revd Catherine Ogle. During the service of thanksgiving organised by the British Embassy to the Holy See, and hosted by All Saints’, Catherine certainly turned heads as well as warming hearts.
Her sermon focused on the Queen’s mirroring of the deepest values that every society should be built on, and quoted the touching messages that all sorts of people had left on the pages in her cathedral to be sent later to the Palace.
The impressive turnout from the corpo diplomatico, and a variety of Vatican offices responded in a similarly wholehearted way by signing the Big Jubilee Thank You letter on their way to the bun-fight.
Later, Catherine confided to me that some of the stares thrown in her direction by members of the congregation took her back to the earliest days of her ordained ministry, when the sight of a woman in clerical dress was still a novelty in the UK, and how it had reawakened in her feelings of personal discomfort in apparently running a gauntlet.
Well, just as Her Majesty has modelled public bravery from time to time, I want to pay tribute to Catherine’s inspired composure on this occasion. A better example could not have been imagined.
Up from the country
THE conversation reminded me of an incident some years ago when women clerics were totally new to All Saints’, Rome. Two women on the underground noticed my female colleague in a clerical collar, and I overheard their exchange.
“She must be some sort of Mother Superior.”
“No, she’s a priest, but she’s from the provinces.”
Yours sincerely
NOW I have got the job of taking all the diocese in Europe’s Big Thank You letters (including those aforementioned diplomatic signatures) to a Roman bookbinder. I do not intend to check every salutation, as I doubt it will be a volume much opened, although I do remember a potential embarrassment during a similar exercise on the occasion of HM’s Golden Jubilee.
At All Saints’, we had simultaneously a book of condolence in memory of Princess Margaret (an occasional worshipper with us), and a letter of congratulations to the Queen. The then American Ambassador to the Holy See wrote in the former: “Congratulations on this happy event.” With a twinge of conscience, we left it in.
The Ven. Jonathan Boardman is the Archdeacon of Italy and Malta, and Chaplain of All Saints’, Rome.