MY FIRST editor when I joined the Catholic Herald in the mid-1980s told me straightaway that he had never been to Rome because he was afraid that it would destroy his faith. As evidence, he cited the experience of Martin Luther, sent there as a young Augustinian friar in 1510.
Fortunately, this curious and unexpected warning came too late. I had an older brother living in Rome and had already grown to love the place. Over the decades, if anything, being there has strengthened my faith by putting me in a place where belief is built into the environment very much more than here.
Nicholas Schofield seems to have had a similar experience. A parish priest of the Westminster diocese, as well as the diocesan archivist, he is better known to his legions of fans as a travel writer with a gift for exploring the avenues and the alleyways of pilgrimage. His first volume, Highways and Byways: Discovering Catholic England (Books, 19 April 2024), drew on his “Nova et Vetera” travel column in the now defunct Catholic Times. Those, like me, who find him agreeable company as a fellow pilgrim are now invited, either on foot or from the comfort of their armchairs, to join him in volume two as he guides us round European shrines from Trondheim in Norway to Istanbul in Turkey.
He opens inevitably enough with a section dedicated to Rome, from the obvious to the colourfully obscure. So, he describes the Lenten custom of visiting a different church in the city for each of 40 days, including probably my favourite, the fifth-century Basilica of Santa Sabina on the Aventine Hill. But he also includes some less-well known, such as the Convent of Santa Francesca Romana with its fantastic murals just off the Piazza Venezia in the centre of the city.
Each entry is brief enough to whet the appetite but — helpfully — also comprehensive enough if you decide that you may never find time to get there.
Peter Stanford is a writer, journalist, and broadcaster, and the author of If These Stones Could Talk: The history of Christianity in Britain and Ireland through 20 buildings (Hodder, 2021).
Highways and Byways: A European pilgrimage
Nicholas Schofield
Gracewing £15.99
(978-0-85244-571-6)
Church Times Bookshop £14.39
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