Tyrone clergy heal rifts with ecumenical trip to Rome

ROME LETTER/PADDY AGNEW : For the newcomer to Rome, the historic street of Via XX Settembre rarely proves an attraction.

ROME LETTER/PADDY AGNEW: For the newcomer to Rome, the historic street of Via XX Settembre rarely proves an attraction.

This long, straight and all-too-busy thoroughfare, leading from Porta Pia in the walls of ancient Rome up to Palazzo Quirinale, home of the Italian president on the Quirinale hill, hardly presents an inviting prospect for a quiet stroll.

Not only is the traffic initimidating but the streetscape is lined by a series of imposing institutional buildings, heavily manned by police or military personnel with an uninviting, "keep out" look about them. That appearance is not deceptive since the ministries of defence, finance, transport and agriculture, to name but the most obvious institutional buildings, are all to be found at some point along this street.

Via XX Settembre - as you can guess, the name means September 20th - played an important role in recent Italian history. The unification of Italy and the foundation of the modern Italian state are generally taken to date from September 20th, 1870, when the charismatic patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi breached the city walls at Porta Pia, in effect ending the papal domination of Rome.

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As Garibaldi and the lads were doing their business at Porta Pia, Pope Pius IX was sulking down the other end of the street in the Palazzo Quirinale, preparing to pack his bags, make way for King Victor Emmanuel and head off to what he referred to as his "imprisonment" in the Vatican.

The pope's dismay was understandable, since the loss of his temporal power forced him to move out of the main papal residence, one which had been established there in the 16th century by Pope Gregory XII so as to avoid the high incidence of malaria in the lower-lying Vatican.

All of these thoughts crossed your correspondent's mind the other morning when sitting in the Church of St Andrews, the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian) house of worship that is to be found half way along Via XX Settembre. Was it pure chance or a previously unsuspected turn of humour in the often dour Presbyterian mind that prompted Presbyterians to set up shop in Rome in the very street that marks the most recent, most emphatic setback experienced by His Holiness? Such mischievous thoughts, I should add, were in stark contrast with my reason for being in the spartan Church of St Andrews. On a bright, sunny morning last week, the church was visited by a Northern Irish delegation, from the Cookstown and District Clergy Forum Ecumenical Group.

The group's title is almost as long as its bridge-building, cross-community initiatives are ambitious. The group of clergymen who travelled to Rome last week included five Catholic priests, three Church of Ireland and two Presbyterian ministers, as well as Maureen Doyle, the community relations officer for Cookstown District Council.

Although there had been informal contacts between various ministers and priests in the Cookstown area throughout much of the last decade, it was only in 1998, in the wake of the Omagh bombing, that the clergy forum was founded.

Last week's outing was part of a programme of annual trips (Iona in Scotland and Bromley by Bow in London were previous destinations) in which the group has sought to learn about religious cohabitation in contexts radically different from Co Tyrone.

In Rome, the group's aim was to learn about how other Christian demoninations (mainly Anglican and Presbyterian) manage to survive in the heart of the Catholic Church's HQ.

The Rev Isaac Thompson, a Presbyterian, was able to inform the rest of the group about how some of the 19th century Scots Presbyterian brethren in Rome had been harrassed regularly, even to the point of narrowly escaping arrest.

The group's chairman, the Rev Kenneth Hall (Church of Ireland), pointed out that their travels tended to have a dual purpose: not only do the clergymen get to escape from the stifling apartheid of Northern Ireland, experiencing situations far removed from the bitter Catholic-Protestnat divide, but they have also come to know one another well in the process.

Sitting with them last week and watching them interact, it was hard not to be struck by their all too-obvious goodwill and gentle cameraderie. Back home in Cookstown, that goodwill has been translated into a series of cross-community initiatives including Good Friday prayer walks, Christmas carol and Remembrance Day services, as well as numerous meetings on issues ranging from ethnic diversity (Portuguese migrants now account for 10 per cent of the population in both Cookstown and nearby Dungannon) to how Christians deal with the pain of bereavment.

For the bereavement meeting, the group invited along a mother whose two sons had been killed by the security forces and one woman who had lost a brother, killed by the IRA.

We do not know but we suspect that the group's stay in Rome last week proved very useful. We can only wish them the best of luck on the long and narrow bridge-building road ahead of them.