ROME 25/4– Day 17: Easter Friday

In Friday, a major holiday for Italy, the sun came up at 06:12 and it sank back down at 20:05. It’s nice that the days are getting longer.

The Roman Station was at the Pantheon, aka, Santa Maria ad martyres.

25 April is the Festa della Liberazione… the Holiday of the Liberation from Nazism and Fascism as WWII came to an end.

Here is little tune which became an unofficial anthem for the anti-fascism movement in Italy and then a song for freedom from tyranny in other places.

I wonder if we will have freedom from tyranny in other spheres.   It seems like the season for it.

We might start with Bruno Forte… what a guy.

ITALY

Bishop Bruno Forte BERATES three people for receiving Communion on the tongue

He claims that Communion should only be received in the hands and that it is ‘pride’ that makes people do otherwise

What are your thoughts? pic.twitter.com/bWqXm0UiSr

— Catholic Arena (@CatholicArena) April 24, 2025

What Forte says here – and it is so condescending – is that people who want to receive on the tongue are disobedient and they think they know better than the Pope and bishops.

Well… maybe they do!

He says that for centuries they received in the hand, for which he has zero evidence.  Then in “darker times” people started receiving on the tongue out of fear of, get this, lack of hygiene.

He grounds his argument on Jesus’ saying (in the Greek) “labete … take” which he say take with the hand. However, lambano can mean a lot of things. Anyone who has ever studied any Greek has had to learn the verb, because it is used as a common paradigm. lambano can also mean a range of things, such as … and put yourself into the context now of the LAST SUPPER and Christ speaking to his new priests who will be the source of Apostolic Tradition.  I’ll emphasize some interesting possibilities:

1. 1. to take
      1. to take with the hand, lay hold of, any person or thing in order to use it
         1. to take up a thing to be carried
         2. to take upon one’s self
      2. to take in order to carry away
         1. without the notion of violence, i,e to remove, take away [in classical Greek also to take by violence]
      3. to take what is one’s own, to take to one’s self, to make one’s own
         1. to claim, procure, for one’s self 1c
      4. to associate with one’s self as companion, attendant
         1. of that which when taken is not let go, to seize, to lay hold of, apprehend
         2. to take by craft (our catch, used of hunters, fisherman, etc.), to circumvent one by fraud [which sounds what some politicians do and what communion in the hand looks like]
         3. to take to one’s self, lay hold upon, take possession of, i.e. to appropriate to one’s self
         4. catch at, reach after, strive to obtain
         5. to take a thing due, to collect, gather (tribute)
      5. to take [“to take” is another way of saying “to eat”]
         1. to admit, receive
         2. to receive what is offered
         3. not to refuse or reject
         4. to receive a person, give him access to one’s self, 1d
   2. to regard any one’s power, rank, external circumstances, and on that account to do some injustice or neglect something [more abuse than positive]
      1. to take, to choose, select
      2. to take beginning, to prove anything, to make a trial of, to experience
   3. to receive (what is given), to gain, get, obtain, to get back

And … on the way to supper with a friend last night.

We were being seated but were also standing and chatting with people at the table next to us, priests I happened to know who came to Rome for the canonization of Carlo Acutis, and a Cardinal rolled in and wanted our table.  The proprietor, being a friend and a really good friend of my dining companion, took them inside.  Sorry Your Eminence.

These nifty bruschette have a dressing of brain and artichoke.

Boiled and fried balls of pork “quinto quarto”, liver, intestine, brain, etc., with a marvelous herb sauce.

Bistecca alla fiorentina.   We couldn’t eat it all so I brought the rest home.

A little salt and lemon and olive oil.  It doesn’t get better.   It was extremely tender.   This was a 60 day (I think… maybe more?) aged porterhouse.

I saw a story elsewhere that the chain for the tolling of the great bell at San Pietro for the death of a pope was found to be broken and the bell had to be rung manually. Not only that, it took five men to do it.

In this video I see one man ringing the bell manually and it sounds at the right pace. Maybe there were four other guys to take over after this one got tired?

Footage of the bell-ringer of St. Peter’s Basilica announcing #PopeFrancis‘ death to the world April 21. pic.twitter.com/Bf6AZVoo7h

— Catholic News Service Rome (@CatholicNewsSvc) April 24, 2025

Anti-drone rifles… it had to happen.

Italian soldiers with anti-drone rifles in Rome, Vaticanoi, for fear Islamist attacks. Because of Islam we are forced to live in fear. pic.twitter.com/nnuS5Nflu2

— RadioGenoa (@RadioGenoa) April 25, 2025

Interim, motus ad lusorem cum militibus albis pertinent. Scaccus mattus, scilicet mors regis, duobus in motis veniat.

NB: Detineam explicationes in crastinum, ne vestrae interrumpantur commentationes.

UPDATE:

Those of you who answered that it is mate in 1, you were right.  That’s because I, stupidly, posted the image of the board after white’s first move and blacks response.  THIS should be the starting position…

A little anticlimactic now.