Bring Me My Chariot

Venerable indeed were the celebrant and assistants at today's Station Mass. The men of the Venerable English College were the hosts today at San Lorenzo in Damaso, near their school. Venerable in America usually just means old, and while the seminarians and priests were of standard age, their school dates back half a millennium, being founded in 1579 when it was impossible to have a Catholic seminary in the homeland; Queen Elizabeth happily obliged them, executing as many of the priestly graduates as she could hunt down.

You may have been waiting with bated breath for the next church dedicated to Saint Lawrence, and today we come to our third and final parish dedicated to the deacon. We must have been pretty eager ourselves, because when we showed up, the doors out front were still locked.







The church is at the core of the Cancelleria, this palace dating to the 1400's. The doors in the center lead into the church.





Those wanting their history a little more venerable, or aged, will be fascinated by this quote from the NAC: "During a restoration after a fire in 1944, inscriptions were found indicating that this was the ancient site of the barracks of the Green Company of Charioteers, thus explaining another ancient name for the church, "San Lorenzo in Prasino" since prasinus, as you probably know, means "leek green" in Latin" . . .






















And as usual, you have to watch out for flying skeletons . . .