Rome Diary: The Beautiful Vocation of Marriage
Simon Caldwell• June 3, 2025
To Carthage I came where a frying pan of illicit loves sputtered all around me … or, rather, to Rome where swifts screamed around the Column of the Immaculate Conception and where Leo XIV had just become the first Augustinian to be elected Pope. I headed immediately to his cathedral, St John Lateran, hoping for a plenary indulgence in this Jubilee Year of mercy and guessing that of the four Roman basilicas with holy doors the queues there would be the shortest. I left the noise, heat and the jasmine for quiet coolness, pacing over a splendid Cosmatesque floor to search between statues of the Apostles for a priest to hear my confession. To obtain an indulgence one must also pray for the intentions of the Pope and I did this on my knees up the nearby Scala Sancta, reciting the sorrowful mysteries amid discomfort that was utterly appropriate when following Our Lord up the stairs of Pilate’s praefectorial palace.
I was too late to attend Pope Leo’s address to journalists that morning, but was delighted to hear he had told us “never to give in to mediocrity” and had saluted the courage of those who told the truth, at any price, because “only informed individuals can make free choices”. I felt the force of his words keenly the next day when I read at Mass in the minor Basilica of San Silvestro in Capite because the relic of the head of St John the Baptist, who proclaimed the truth at the cost of his life, was just yards away in a side altar. The church also possesses a huge portrait of St John Fisher, who had compared himself to the Baptist while opposing the designs of Henry VIII to marry his mistress. It was impossible “to die more gloriously than in the cause of marriage”, remarked Fisher. He, like the Baptist, is a great model for Catholic journalists, though is hard to imagine either man rushing to applaud the teachings of either Amoris Laetitia or Fiducia Supplicans. The truth, as they revealed by their witness, really does matter.
Turning the corner from San Silvestro, I arrived at the Italian Parliament where I joined Sidra Naeem, the Deputy Lord Lieutenant of Essex; and others for a meeting of the Tafida Raqeeb Foundation, the primary purpose of my visit. The foundation aims to establish a hospital in the UK for children with severe head injuries and is also campaigning to change British law so parents of such children can seek treatment overseas for treatment when the NHS won’t provide it. It takes its name from the London schoolgirl flown to Italy in 2019 following a High Court battle to save her life. Shelina Begum, the girl’s mother, told Italian deputies (MPs) that Tafida was given just days to live but today is in rehabilitation in Genoa where she continues to show signs of improvement. Surely is it reasonable to give all such children a chance of life. Please help the foundation by signing a petition calling for a review of “children’s critical decision law” which you can find on its website here.
I left Parliament to go to San Girolamo della Carità, the church opposite the English College where St Philip Neri founded the Oratorians. My wife and I wed there on 26th May, his feast day, in the last Jubilee Year, a date selected unconsciously by us. It was strange to be there without her, less than two weeks before our silver anniversary, standing alone on the spot where we exchanged our vows. As I recalled the occasion, our wedding day seemed incredibly recent. I was struck not only by the sense that 25 years is not necessarily a long time in a marriage but also by the realisation that Church teaching about this sacrament is not so much the application of some abstract concept, but a description of what God has created and which no man can redefine or destroy. It is tragic that in the West this beautiful vocation is in a far greater state of crisis than even the priesthood.
As I offered prayers of thanksgiving for my marriage and for the success of the next 25 years, should God permit us such time on earth, my attention was fixed, in a way in which it has never been previously, on a copy of the Last Communion of St Jerome, the masterpiece by Domenichino which hangs over the high altar and captures brilliantly the two most important moments in anyone’s life, “now and the hour of our death”. St Jerome lived on this site in a house owned by Paula, a Roman noblewoman and his disciple. He is among those saints whom for decades I have felt a powerful attachment. I admire his erudition, his commitment to exposing corruption, and I am amused by his irascibility, his crankiness. I also believe he has been very kind to me. I don’t think it is purely coincidental that my first novel, The Beast of Bethulia Park, was published on 30th September, the feast of St Jerome, given that he is the patron of librarians. It was another date selected unconsciously. St Jerome is also great model for any Catholic writer and I prayed to him often when writing Lady Mabel’s Gold, my second novel.
(Pic of the interior of San Girolamo della Carità by Simon Caldwell)