August 24, 2013
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| Basilica of San Giovanni |
After nearly two months, we finally decided we needed a moment to ourselves (actually it was about 2 hours.) We had driven past San Giovanni (St. John's Cathedral) a couple of night's ago on our way home from the airport. (Yes, we were lost, but somebody else was driving and Tom, Tom lead him astray.) It's one of the sight's in Rome we haven't seen on prior trips here. The cathedrals here are beautiful. They are big and elegant and impressive to look at. However, I prefer a quaint little Mormon chapel full of happy people filled with love and charity and the light of Christ.
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The Basilica of San Giovanni is Christendom's earliest basilica and home of the Popes for a thousand years. Part of St. John's Cathedral was the original Vatican, but when the current Vatican was built, this cathedral was enlarged and dedicated to St. John.
St. John Lateran is Christendom's earliest basilica. Ordered by Rome's first Christian Emperor, Constantine the Great, it became the Pope's own cathedral and official residence for the first millennium of Christian History.
Today, standing before the basilica's ponderous eighteenth-century facade, assailed by ear-splitting Roman traffic snarls on every side, we can hardly imagine this as the cradle of our religious heritage.
A visitor should glance upwards. Towering against the usually cobalt-blue Roman sky, a 7-meter high statue of Christ, flanked by saints and doctors of the Church, triumphantly displays the Cross of Redemption.
It was to Jesus the Savior that Constantine dedicated the original church, confirming Christ's superiority over the Capital's pagan gods and assuring the worldwide expansion of the Christian religion.
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| Simon |
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| Peter |
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| Paul |
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| Thomas |
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| Phillip |
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| Matthew |
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| Thaddeus |
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| Peter |
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