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When in Rome: A Journal of Life in Vatican City
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About When In Rome: A Journal Of Life In Vatican City
Product Description Lighthearted and altogether fascinating, When in Rome is a delightful backstairs tour of one of the world's most mysterious and eccentric cities. With his wife and three young sons, Robert Hutchinson moved to Rome shortly before his thirty-ninth birthday, intending to explore the Vatican in depth. He sought to capture "the personality of the place: the smells and the traffic, the rich delicacies of Roman food, the perils of the Italian language, the way Italian monsignori push their way to the front of the line, just like their lay countrymen." When in Rome is the extraordinary journal of his Roman sojourn.With playful good humor, Hutchinson introduces the varied and colorful individuals who live and work in the Vatican. In the process, he explores the mysterious orders of medieval knights, some dating back to the First Crusade, which still play a vital role in the Vatican; explains how bumbling Vatican archaeologists found, and then lost, the bones of St. Peter; probes the sex lives of the popes, from the "pornocracy" of Sergius III to the incestuous orgies of Rodrigo Borgia; experiences high fashion in the Holy See, including a visit to the pope's personal tailor; encounters the weird relics of Catholicism, such as the mummified body of St. Pius X and a museum made entirely out of human bones; recounts the true story behind the True Cross, now kept in a run-down church near the Colosseum; and much, much more.Humorous, irreverent, but ultimately respectful, When in Rome does for the Vatican what A Year in Provence did for the French countryside, in an unforgettable and unprecedented eyewitness account of one of the most fascinating places on Earth. Amazon.com Review Robert Hutchinson is on a mission: to explore the living center of the Roman Catholic Church. "Twenty years after my first visit to Rome I set out to rediscover the Vatican. I wondered how it would all seem, to a smart-aleck American writer and confused Catholic, to really poke around the place, talk to the people who actually run it." When in Rome is not a book of theology or politics, it's a compilation of the nitty-gritty, day-to-day inside stories of what really makes the Eternal City tick. "I wanted to know how much money a cardinal made, what those silly capelike outfits were called, where the Swiss Guards went drinking on their days off, and so on," explains Hutchinson. This book is a collection of the best of his discoveries. Always with a sense of humor and a bottomless curiosity (sometimes irreverent, but never disrespectful), Hutchinson reveals how archaeologists found, then lost, the bones of St. Peter; he seeks erotic literature in the Vatican library to help him brush up on his Italian (when studying foreign languages he finds this genre increases his motivation to look up new words in the dictionary); he learns that "relics" in Rome range from right arms to foreskins; and devotes an entire chapter to the sex lives of the popes. If Rome is on your itinerary, When in Rome is an excellent take-along read that will help make the Vatican City come to life. --Kathryn True From Publishers Weekly "One of the advantages of being a Catholic," begins our guide, former editor of Hawaii magazine and frequent writer about Catholicism and gambling, "is that you get to see a lot of beautiful naked women." It's a blatant hook, but Hutchinson (The Book of Vices) knows how to keep a tour group together as he leads the reader through a year (1996) poking around RomeAand into the business of the vaticanistiAwith a snappy style and an eye for detail. Hutchinson flirts with a gonzo persona, kvetching about what he's up against in the Curial bureaucracy when trying to get a good gossipy tidbit. If his humor is occasionally strained (as when he speculates that the pope would rather be in bed watching Beverly Hillbillies reruns), Hutchinson settles into a raconteur's tone that befits the epigrammatic company of such fellow write
