San Marco

I was walking across the Piazza Venezia about 6 am this morning, well before the 7 o’clock beginning of the Station Mass at Saint Mark’s, and the doors were already open to the church allowing early visitors in.  I was on my way to Mass with the MC sisters, so didn’t stay for the liturgy there.

While Pope Saint Mark is buried under the main altar, one tradition links the site of the church with the house that Mark the Evangelist stayed in while he was in Rome.

The Evangelist’s body of course is in the much more famous Saint Mark’s Basilica in Venice, with the one problem there being that it’s underwater.

Or at least, the piazza it’s in is flooded.  On a recent visit to Venice in January, we got to use these handy walkways to get to the church, and here you can see that water has even come in the front door.

Luckily, the body of the church is higher than the portico, so there wasn’t water inside the church.  Or in the crypt that one of the guards took me down into after having concelebrated the Mass there.