A wonderful morning

Well, I think I met the nicest bishop in Rome this morning. Bishop Elio Sgreccia is not only a doughty warrior for the cause of righteousness, he's a delightful polite and kindly man.

He is retired from a lifetime of work in the bioethics fields, and lives in a top-storey flat on the top of the Holy Office. The view outside his place is of the dome of St. Peter's and Bernini's saints. It doesn't get any more exclusive than that. The building is a marvel of high Italian Renaissance neo-classical design, very simple and beautiful.

When he was seeing me to the lift, I said, "I have to ask: did Gallileo come here?"

He laughed at this and nodded, "Yes, he did."

* ~ * ~ *

Then, the weather being stupendously nice, and the queue being nearly non-existent, I popped into St. Peter's B. for a quick stroll around.

It was quite nice too.

I've got some good pics, esp. of the Pieta, (and more from the last couple of weeks,) but, wouldn't you know it? the wretched re-chargeables are no good. I had them in the charging thingy all night, and they gave me five pics before they doid.

So you'll have to wait.

Meanwhile, I've been in brief correspondence with a chap named John Mallon, who works for Human Life International and is assuredly on the side of the angels. He had a note up, via Fr. Tim, about creating a Catholic bloggers news network. I signed O's P. on and received the following message:

Dear Friends,

I am absolutely delighted with the response to the postings placed for me by Mark Shea and Fr. Tim Finigan. I believe we in the Catholic Blogosphere need each other and should help each other as we do kind of represent a a sort of “underground press” in an increasingly hostile world. In view of this, I am asking your help once again by asking all of you if you would be willing to take this one step further with me by posting the same message on your Blogs that Fr. Tim so graciously posted. Then this could grow exponentially. I would be much obliged and we could really build something here. Again, especially appreciated are Bloggers from UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. I plan soon to contact and thank you all individually.

God bless you!
In Christ,
John

I would be most grateful if you could copy and paste the text below into your Blogs:

John Mallon is trying to assemble an email list of Blogs in the English speaking world, especially in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and the Philippines. He is currently working as Contributing Editor for Inside the Vatican magazine, doing media relations for Human Life International, and assisting at the Envoy Institute in a promotional capacity. He has two degrees in theology and frequently has items of interest to Catholic Bloggers worldwide. With 25 years of experience in the Catholic Press, he has found that major secular outlets are often closed to these messages. If you have or know of Blogs that would be interested in receiving press releases and other pertinent materials for your Blogs, he would very much appreciate getting a mailing list of these blogs for this purpose. This is not spam. Anyone not wishing to receive these materials will be removed from the list immediately upon request. Catholic Blogs are absolutely critical for spreading credible information on the Church. This mailing list could serve as a News Agency supplying news and other information to Catholic Blogs.

It is absolutely maddening trying to harvest emails off of Blogs, where people won't post their emails. He is only interested in people who want to receive these messages, not bothering anyone.

For more on John Mallon please visit his website at: http://johnmallon.net

Please let me know if you can help.

Thanks & God bless you,

You can email John at: johnmallon@mac.com