I am coming to love my parishioners and so enjoy being immersed in the life of St. Paul’s and our wider community. And an important part of my self-care – and really, my missional experience – is to build relationships beyond. I love to explore, so what better way to meet
others than to join a Rome Explorers Meet-Up group! Today, a group of us took the train to the outer reaches of Lazio to hike the hills around Salisano. We started in one hilltop town (population with dogs and cats of about 150 souls), hiked down and up to another (population 300) and back again. New companions, steep hills, ample sunshine and early spring in bud. Delightful!
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Among the Saints in Rome 
Beautiful area. Are you hiking with Italians or a variety of people with different backgrounds? Do you speak Italian? Do you deliver your sermons in Italian?
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Hi Loretta! Great questions. The hiking group is a combination of Italian and English. The church operates in English and Spanish. The question of whether and how parishes in the Convocation should embrace the predominant language of where they are planted is a very important one. It’s really a question about God’s mission in a time and place and the gifts of our Anglican-Episcopal life. St. Paul’s has for various reasons – including a core congregation that historically speaks and wants to continue to speak English – chosen to stay focused on English. (I preach in English. Speaking just for me, it’s too easy to be language lazy here. I would like to go total immersion and really learn the language of a place. That’s a different blog post though!) La Comunidad LatinoAmericana speaks Spanish and is also fluent in Italian. That said, they enjoy worshipping in their first language. But the agape after can be a joyful melange of Spanish and Italian. What a hoot for me!
The Joel Nafuma Refugee Center, because its mission is to serve guests trying to live and work in the EU, is more broadly based in both English and Italian, and also offers instruction in French and German.
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