Lindsey Brown reports on an ecumenical dialogue group pilgrimage to Rome

Hurtling at 300km an hour through the Italian countryside, my head was full of the previous 72 hours. We had just begun a 14-hour train journey from Rome to London in four parts, as the final leg of the final journey which was bringing the third quinquennial of the Roman Catholic/United Reformed Church Dialogue Group to a close.

In the previous five years the group had travelled together to Carlisle, to Milton Keynes, through a pandemic, to Cardiff and to Edinburgh. We had explored theological questions, talked with local churches about mission, and shared in profoundly moving worship. Much of this has been collated into the group’s final document, a resource pack enabling local churches to travel together on similar journeys in small groups. We had now come to Rome for our final journey together and to offer this pack to ecumenical friends and partners.

Our first stop in Rome, a change in plan due to Pope Francis’s health, was a tour of the Scavi: excavations under St Peter’s Basilica where a 2,000-year-old necropolis has been revealed. The story we heard there took us through ancient mausoleums, shrines, a fourth-century basilica, and – convincingly – to the apostle Peter’s own burial place. We were then led up a dark winding staircase to emerge unexpectedly into the overwhelming, blindingly bright, extraordinary spectacle of the basilica: a sensory overload, a wild clash of sculpture, monument, painting, gold, marble, texture, colour, added to across the centuries, and mixed in now with the sound of hundreds of jubilee pilgrims and their guides. Everywhere the eye went it was caught by the familiar (wasn’t that Michelangelo’s Pieta through there, beyond that crowd of pilgrims in military fatigues?) and by the gaudy, the breathtaking, and the deeply moving…

Lindsey Brown is URC Evangelism and Ecumenical Officer and Co-Secretary of the RC/URC Dialogue Group. To find out more, email mission@urc.org.uk. The Resource Pack for Local Churches is available at bit.ly/ecuPack. We thank those who gave gracious gifts of time and expertise and their openness in our conversations

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This is an extract from an article published in the Issue 4 – 2025 edition of Reform

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