05/30/2026
Over the past couple of days, our pilgrimage has taken us to Orvieto and to our final destination, Rome.
In Orvieto, it was a powerful experience for all of us to participate in the Mass inside of the cathedral’s Adoration chapel, where the bloody corporal from Orvieto’s 1263 Eucharistic miracle is kept behind a set of doors which sit above the tabernacle. The frescoes on the chapel walls told a story of God’s love for His people in that, in addition to giving us minds to know He exists and sending His Son so that we may know who He is, He gave us a miraculous reminder of the truth of the Catholic faith by causing a Eucharistic host to bleed during the consecration. Another personally moving aspect of our time in Orvieto was our trip to the church of Saint Dominic, where we were able to venerate the chair of Saint Thomas Aquinas and the crucifix which spoke to him in 1273. The witness of the Saints has been powerful throughout this pilgrimage, but that of Thomas, whose writings were such that the council fathers at Trent laid his Summa Theologica upon the altar and prayed not to contradict the teachings contained within, was particularly powerful. When Our Lord spoke to Thomas through the crucifix, He asked him what he would like to receive for all that he had written, and Thomas’s answer reminds us of the proper order of priorities: “nothing but you, Lord”.
In Rome, it is immediately evident why the city is called “The Eternal City”. Just a short walk from Italy’s beautiful modern capitol building are the ruins and remains of the once great Roman Forum, which would have been the center of political and social life in the Roman Republic and Empire. Even the remains of what once stood there, as well as the massive Colosseum, reveal the heights of engineering and organization reached by Rome two thousand years ago. While admiring these and the other ruins of the empire, it is hard not to reflect on the fact that I am staring at the foundations of Western society, the greatest society that the world has seen. The peak of the West’s greatness, however, is not symbolized in any Roman ruins, but in Saint Peter’s Basilica. From the outside, the basilica is breathtaking, with an endless array of artistic and architectural feats to focus our eyes on.
During our first morning in Rome, we were able to find great seats for Pope Leo’s motorcade ride before the Wednesday audience, and it was awesome to sit in Saint Peter’s square and see the Holy Father up close with the basilica as our backdrop. Our tour of the basilica from Dr. Elizabeth Lev was spectacular, as she used humor and her immense knowledge of the space and its history to contextualize and explain the church to our group. Though built in such a way as to conceal its colossal size, the massiveness of the structure was still evident to us all. From some of the greatest and most indescribable artistic works of all time, such as Michelangelo’s Pieta, to massive statues standing nearly 20 feet tall, Saint Peter’s exemplifies the lengths that the Catholic faithful have gone to glorify God in art and architecture. The entire space, which sits in the same spot where Saint Peter was executed by Nero, is oriented towards his tomb and communicates the Gospel message that God has come and continues to come to us.
It is our prayer that modern Catholics will come together to once again build the great basilicas and churches of days past, focusing our efforts towards the greatest glorification of God.
Nothing but you, Lord.
—Victor Payment
