A Roman Catholic explores Rome, sweet Rome, the city of his religious roots. Frank Franzonia writes: As Jerusalem calls to a Jew and Mecca to a Muslim, the Eternal City bid me, a Roman Catholic, to explore my religious roots. St. Peter’s, Catholicism’s grandest basilica, was high on this pilgrim’s list and it induced goosebumps even before entering, as I approached for the first time the famous square. Then again, this is not just any square. It is surrounded by Bernini’s open-armed pair of quadruple colonnades topped by a balustrade and statues of 140 saints, all waiting in welcome. Rome, it turns out, is a city of churches, numbering about 900. Heck, even the Pantheon, once a pagan temple, is now a Catholic house of worship. In a visit with three young men (my sons) more bent on bar-hopping, shopping or scooting around on a Vespa, I managed to get inside St. Peter’s, Santa Maria Maggiore and St. John Lateran-three of Rome’s great basilicas.
Karen R. Long reviews “Letters of a Portuguese Nun” by Myriam Cyr: Who can resist a gorgeous love letter, particularly the throbbing words of a nun whose soldier has returned to duty, leaving her distraught in her convent? Not many, it turns out, when the letters are this frank, intelligent and lush-both back in 1669, when they first appeared, and now. The five epistles are reprinted in English translation in a new book, “Letters of a Portuguese Nun.” The first edition created a sensation-selling out immediately, counterfeited within a month and sparking a controversy about their authorship that has divided European scholars to this day. Myriam Cyr, a multilingual, Canadian-born actress who fell in love with the letters at a reading, has written a passionate if unpolished book, the product of three years of travel and research in defense of the authorship of one Mariana Alcoforado.