“There’s a crisis in priestly vocations.”

That’s the general impression circulating through contemporary America.

It’s usually prefaced with concerns like: “the number of priests is dropping at an alarming rate since the recent clerical sex abuse scandals,” or: “of course Catholics are turning their backs on backward-looking church dogma.”

None of these observations are entirely accurate.

Deacon Joe Zwosta in the common room at the North American College seminary, Rome | Photo by Ines Novacic

Catholicism is still the largest single religious denomination in the United States. The Roman Catholic Church comprises almost 80 million members.

Last year, there were 467 new priestly ordinations; up two percent from 2002.

“Bearing the Cross in a Changing World” examines the passage to priesthood in America, through the eyes of one young man from Brooklyn.

Meet Deacon Joe, a seminarian at the most prestigious American seminary, the Pontifical North American College in Rome. Located a stone’s throw away from the epicenter of Roman Catholicism, on a hill overlooking St Peter’s Basilica, what’s happening this year under the North American College roof is symptomatic of the priestly vocation in the US: numbers are up, and men are increasingly conservative.

For the first time in almost 50 years, the seminary is full, and most of it’s men seem to be true pupils of Pope Benedict, a Holy See far more traditionalist than his predecessor, Pope John Paul II.

“Bearing the Cross in a Changing World” unlocks some of the secret doors of priesthood, and grounds the experience of seminary formation in a largely secularized, American context.

Bari Cathedral at sunset. | Photo by Ines Novacic.

BARI — Although the Religio team is packing their bags to go back to New York on this beautiful warm night in the charming city of Bari, it’s far from curtain close for our adventure. And not just because all 16 of us have “big” religion stories to produce in the next six weeks — if this trip has taught us anything, it’s that there’s always another mass to attend, another relic to stumble upon, another lesson to learn. Today, the last day of our multi-bus-ride, multi-city trip, is a case-in point.

Half our entourage of 20-odd people woke up this morning earlier than planned. The heating in the Casa del Pellegrino hotel was a fickle mistress, and the morning dew of the Southern Italian mountains was quite the eye opener. By eight o’clock, the Covering Religion side of the fourth floor corridor was buzzing with murmurs and yawns, from students, professors and friends of Religio, like Daniel Arrasa, from Santa Croce University in Rome.

“Everyone is here on time,” remarked Arrasa, pleasantly surprised and somewhat in disbelief this morning at breakfast in our hotel.

“We should have had set times for breakfast every morning,” said Professor Ari Goldman, referring to the somewhat odd time constraints imposed upon us by the hotel management. We all had to eat breakfast together between half past eight and nine o’clock; and the night before, everyone had to abide by a ten-thirty curfew. (Given that our overnight stay at Casa del Pellegrino coincided with St. Patrick’s Day, as an Irish person, it was a particularly amusing rule).

Ultimately, a little extra time to sleep served us all well. We wouldn’t have gotten through the day, especially since the collective energy of the group is on its last legs, after a busy ten days. More importantly, not seeing as much as we could of Bari, our final stop, would have been criminal.

A room with a view of San Michelle is difficult to top: the beauty of the white, wonderfully romantic and lively little town took us all by surprise, and watching the sun set from a castle on a hill was something most of us will never forget.

Saint Michelle at dusk. | Photo by Ines Novacic.

“This is the moment of the trip for me,” said classmate Sarah Laing. Laing and I had the pleasure of taking one last stroll through the tiny white stone streets before the bus came to take us to the Boston Hotel in Bari.

We joked about renting one of the tine white stone houses and working on our writing in the years to come, neither wanted to leave. From the bus, Bari didn’t seem to compare. It was only after our tour guide, Anna Lisa Leve, walked us towards the historic quarter of Bari as residents slowly rose from their Sunday afternoon siestas, that we started to come around.

Bari isn’t just a picturesque city on the sea, there’s a rare kind of welcoming and charming feeling that animates every windy street, every little balcony draped in countless sheets and clothes of all sizes. Like stepping into Juliette Binoche’s “Chocolaterie” in the town of the film Chocolat. Walking towards the main piazza, to meet the rest of the class for our “Last Supper,” I took as many pictures as I could, which included one of a middle-aged couple holding hands, walking under a streetlight.

“Ah, photograph! Where do you come from?” the woman asked.

“Irlanda,” I replied in my best Italian.

“Oh! St Patrick day yes, yes! We like very much!” the man laughed.

From Leve, to our tour guide at the Saint Nicholas museum, and from the blonde woman who sold us gelato to the patient waiters who allowed us to sing song after Disney song in the restaurant after our meal, the residents of Bari have inadvertently convinced me that I’ll be back to this place.

We saw a lot during our three-hour tour: an impressive castle from the 12th century, a medieval cathedral on top of an early Christian basilica and the shrine of Saint Nicholas with pilgrims praying in front of it, complete with an extra chapel, so that Orthodox visitors can pray alongside their Catholic counterparts.

The highlight, however, was the delicious four-course meal that we enjoyed together as a class. For the first time during our trip, it was just us, our wonderful T.A. Francesca Trianni and our Professor – we’ll just say Goldman junior and his lovely girlfriend Ana were guests of honor. Sadly, Professor Stille left us earlier this morning, to catch a flight back to the Big Apple, but we thought of him as we ate wonderful quiche, pasta, fish, salad, potatoes and drank red wine.

The 18 of us sat in the same room, just like we had done every Monday throughout the semester, but it was completely different.

We’re no longer just colleagues or classmates that see each other once a week. Trianni, who will be joining the ranks of J-School students next year, is the “assistant who translates things” no more; and Goldman has become more than a professor to us, truly a mentor and friend. I think I speak for all of us when I say that this trip, and all that we learnt throughout it, has created a wonderful memory that will live on forever.

RELIGIO!

Michelangelo himself was inspired by The Belvedere Torso at the Vatican Museum. | Photo by Ines Novacic.

In each of our hotel rooms, a religious-themed painting hangs on the wall. Not quite as Catholic of a reminder as a crucifix, but enough to impress upon us where we are, and in which religious culture.

In Rome, Catholicism really is “culture”, not just the official religion.

During our trip to the Methodist Church on the first day of our trip, the Rev. Kenneth Howcroft — remarked that “when religion becomes culture, culture becomes religion.” I struggled to dissect the meaning behind this, because it seemed a somewhat muddled way to state the obvious without shedding light on much else. But I thought about it and Italian sociologist Roberto Cipriani’s idea of “diffused religion” came to mind. Cipriani argued more than 20 years ago that the secularization of religious practices did not signal the end of religion, but that moving religious rites from the Church to the home, office and other non-sacred spaces demonstrated the saturation of religion in Italian culture.

Throughout the next two days of our trip, I couldn’t help but notice that the art we encountered validated this theory – that religion informs culture to the point of subsuming it – perhaps more than anything else.

I’m not going to try pin down the meaning of “art,” but most will agree that it’s a key cultural product. Art objectifies cultural “signs” a la Clifford Geertz. The subject matter of art stems from the artist’s inner experience, and the signs that exist in the world the artist inhabits.

Religious art is abundant in places like Rome because religion is sprinkled atop the web of Italian culture – from education to politics and health to social convention. Artists internalize and respond to this; and patronage is available to showcase these artists, whether a hotel that commissions third-rate religious portraits—mostly of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus — or a Pope that commissions awe-inspiring art like the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

We had the pleasure of seeing several works by Michelangelo on our visit to the Vatican Museum earlier today. As our tour guide extraordinaire, the art historian Dr. Elizabeth Lev, pointed out – the birth of the modern museum occurred within Vatican walls, namely the circular pantheon-like chamber, with about a dozen statues of pagan gods. It flourished, grew and now attracts more than five million visitors every year, because very wealthy and influential figures like Pope Julius II funded it and ensured that emphasis on religious work endured.

Dr. Lev stands with the Religio team in the courtyard of the Vatican Museum. | Photo by Ines Novacic.

Something like the Sistine Chapel ceiling could never have depicted anything non-religious, specifically non-Catholic, because religion is culture in Rome – for secular art, patrons would be scarce, an audience scarcer and the art itself perhaps not as impressive, since the artist cannot help but have something to express about the impression religion has made on his personal experiences.

“It’s incredible,” was the consensus among our class, about the “Pietà” in St. Peter’s Basilica. “Amazing,” the usual reaction to works like da Vinci’s “Adoration of the Magi.” They really do take your breath away. But if we pause to think why, and whose breath is most compromised, it’s those who know about the story behind the painting, who understand the beauty behind the inexplicably delicate grip that Michelangelo’s Mary has on Jesus’s marble flesh.

We are most affected by the art whose subject matter we are most in awe of. Religious art is by far the most impressive in Rome, because religion is impressed so completely on the lives of the people in this city.

Elementary school children in Sunday School in Brooklyn's Mt Carmel parish. | Photo by Ines Novacic.

Israel is a middle school student from Brooklyn, and he’s tired this morning. Throughout Sunday mass at his local parish, the Shrine Church of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel in Williamsburg, he sits slumped over. The hood of his red jumper covers his face for the duration of the 10am service.

As echoes of “Alleluia” from the closing hymn infuse the nave, many rise and prepare to go home. But for Israel, who preferred not to give his last name, worship is not over.

Most teenagers relax on Sundays, Israel has religious education. He not only goes to mass, but a “Faith Formation” class immediately afterwards.

Israel wasn’t any more animated when it came to faith class. His teacher, Lou Aponte, moved her chair in front of the blackboard. “Now,” she said, “we talked about the Pentecost last week. Who can tell me about it?”

Four hands shot into the air.

“Israel, what about you?”

His hands hadn’t moved from under his chin, but finally he did respond.

“Um, wasn’t it, after that, when the Holy Spirit came to St. Peter, and they were all scared, St. Peter came onto the balcony and everyone understood him?”

“Yes, the Holy Spirit was their translator.” Aponte said. “Peter and the disciples and Mary were visited by the Holy Spirit, and he told them to preach about Christ’s resurrection. The disciples felt abandoned when Jesus rose and ascended to Heaven. They felt lonely, and they were persecuted. But the Holy Spirit came and became their fire. He gave them their incentive. He was their backbone, and he gave them everything to go down and preach.” Aponte looked at each of her students.

“Ramon, please read page 23 from your book,” she said.

A small, dark-haired adolescent began reading a chapter titled “Gifts of the Holy Spirit”. He concluded the first paragraph: “like any gift, the ones from the Holy Spirit have to be opened.”

“And how do we get these gifts?” Aponte addressed the class. “Do they get mailed to you?”

The kids looked at each other and giggled.

“No!”

“On Confirmation, are you gonna get a big package?”

“No!”

“Of course not! It means open your mind, open your hearts. It’s just like in school, when you have a project you have to work with. You’re the Holy Spirit’s project, you have to work with him.”

Class ended shortly after noon, after further discussions about the teachings of the Holy Spirit, and instruction on how to follow Christ. Aponte let the kids joke around, and pointed out that maximizing on their talents counted as “following Christ”. She’s been teaching for 20 years at the Mt. Carmel parish.

“I have 14 teachers in total,” said Walsh, in the kitchen of the Rectory, after she closed and locked the six rooms that had been in use for religious education. “Every single one is a volunteer.”

The kettle boiled. Walsh explains how each person, whether teacher or parent, “or whoever,” who comes into contact with kids in the “Faith Formation” program, has to complete a “Virtus” training. Because of the recent sex abuse scandals that ravaged the reputation of the Catholic Church, each Diocese now mandates a once-off special “working with children” workshop.

Walsh says that she wakes up a little bit happier on the days she has to come to Mt. Carmel. Her work with kids from the parish is “her life.”

“Normally, there’s a minimum of six classes for sacrament. We do 12. We think it’s that important,” said Walsh, sipping Early Grey tea.

“And we make the kids come to mass, of course! It’s backing up what we’re doing, right?”

As a Eucharistic Minister, Francesca Illuzzi prepares the consecrated host. | Photo by Ines Novacic.

The Rev. John Massari has thick black eyebrows and a mane of silver hair. He emerges from the door to the back-left of the altar in green embroidered robes, the appropriate color for the period of Ordinary Time, which begins eight days after Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar of the Catholic Church. ­­His footsteps sound hollow on the marble floor, and they interject the opening recital of Mass, delivered by long-time congregation member Francesca Illuzzi.

“Gesu, l’unico maestro di sapienza e liberatore della potenza de male,” Illuzzi, 77, invokes the power and virtue of Jesus as Massari stands to face the congregation of the church of Our Lady of Pompeii. As is custom, the 11 o’clock Sunday Mass is in Italian, and Massari’s booming voice addresses an audience of around 40 Italians and Italian-Americans, in the 120-year old Church on Carmine Street.

Before the consecration of the bread and the wine during Communion, Massari pauses to deliver a key part of the Eucharistic Prayer. He asks God to grant peace to the Church, “together with your servant Benedict XVI, our Pope.”

The Pope’s name is mentioned in each of the four Eucharistic Prayers, one of which is always recited during the second half of Mass—the part known as the Mass of the Faithful.

Although the public does not repeat the name out loud, devout Catholics like Illuzzi say a silent prayer for their Pope after Massari’s tribute, most with heads bowed.

The current canon of the mass is known as the “post-Tridentine” mass, or the Mass of Paul VI, whose liturgy was promulgated in 1969, after the Second Vatican Council. But praying for the Pope is nothing new. It’s almost as old as ritualized mass itself, which began during the first century. Intercessions, or “prayers on behalf of others”, including the Pope, were included in the liturgy from the time of Pope Pius I in the second century.

“You say the name out loud to call attention to the people,” Massari explains after the service is over. In the rectory office, adjacent to the nave of the Church, a picture of the current Holy See, Pope Benedict XVI, hangs. “The Pope is a Catholic figure,” says Massari, “in other words, he is a universal figure.”

Massari says that praying for the Pope is important, because of the important function he serves as the leader of God’s people on earth. “The way you pray for the President of the United States, it makes sense to pray for the Pope because of his responsibility.”

Most practicing Catholics don’t limit praying for the Pope to time at mass. Illuzzi says that she prays for Benedict XVI every day, in private, as she’s done for the other five Popes who’ve led the Church during her lifetime.

“If they nominated him, it means he deserves it. The cardinals, the Holy Spirit inspires them, and I pray for the Pope that the Holy Spirit inspires him to do the right thing for his people,” says Illuzzi, a first-generation Italian immigrant from Bari in Italy. Her fifth floor walk up in the West Village has been her home ever since she came as a newlywed to New York 48 years ago. Religious iconography decorates every room, including a stained glass lamp on her bedside table, which illuminates passport-sized pictures of the loved ones she’s lost. In the living room, a large portrait of the previous Pope, John Paul II is propped on a dresser against the wall.

“Of course I have the Pope’s picture, but not yet the most recent one. I have small postcards of him, people send me them from Italy,” she explains. “Popes are not all the same, but they’re always inspired by the Holy Spirit, to teach the whole Church.”

Illuzzi believes that the Holy Spirit directly instructs the Pope, and that through this instruction the Pope is the best possible leader of the Catholic Church. She says that the episode of the Pentacost, when the Holy Spirit inspired St. Peter and the Apostles, to preach the gospel of Christ’s resurrection marks the beginning of the relationship between the Pope and the Holy Spirit.

For Catholics—whether members of the clergy or the congregation—the short mention of the Pope during mass evidences a long-standing importance given to his title. According to Catholic dogma, Jesus effectively named the Apostle Simon “Peter”, the first Pope. In the gospel of Matthew, Jesus says: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church.” This is thought to have happened in Rome, which is why the Papacy is based there, in the Vatican

“I never criticize the Pope,” Illuzzi says, “I hold my opinion to myself. There is always a higher motivo why a Cardinal was made a Pope.”