{"id":4224,"date":"2006-03-09T08:33:59","date_gmt":"2006-03-09T08:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html"},"modified":"2006-03-09T08:33:59","modified_gmt":"2006-03-09T08:33:59","slug":"st-gaspar-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html","title":{"rendered":"St. Gaspar"},"content":{"rendered":"

In comments below, Fr. Keyes, aka The New Gasparian<\/a>, asked if in our Trevi Fountain wanderings, we came across St. Gaspar del Bufalo. Well, as a matter of fact that’s one of the main reasons we returned. <\/p>\n

Ever since we moved up here, St. Gaspar del Bufalo<\/a> has been a part of our consciousness in some way or another. He is the founder of the Society of the Precious Blood, which used to have quite a presence around here – Joseph attends preschool at Most Precious Blood School which, until last year when they pulled out of the parish and school was, as you’d expect from the name, a ministry of the Society. <\/p>\n

I think we first ran across him not long after we moved up here, and we were driving around western Ohio, looking at the famed Cross-tipped churches<\/a>. We came upon this enormous establishment, plunked down in the middle of farmland, rising from the plain. Take a look.<\/a> It turned out to be the former St. Charles Seminary of the Society, now a retirement home for members – quiet and largely empty – a testimony to the vigor of former times. In the chapel was a relic – a portion of St. Gaspar’s forearm. <\/a>What was this place? What was this order? Who was this saint? <\/p>\n

So we studied up and familiarized ourselves with the rather remarkable life of St. Gaspar, and Michael has some stories of prayers answered that he chalks up to the intercession of the saint. So, in visiting the Trevi fountain, he knew that St. Gaspar’s shrine was somewhere around there, and even thought he knew the name of the church – S. Marie de Trevi, naturally enough. But where was it?<\/p>\n

(a common question in Rome. I know it should be around here? Where is it? What’s the name of this street anyway?)<\/em><\/p>\n

As we got to the fountain, we looked around – there was a church directly in front, but not the right place. Leaving that church, we saw two police officers in those incredibly bulky-looking Italian police uniforms. Michael asked if they knew – Gaspar del Bufalo? Maria de Trevi? Chiesa? They shrugged, looked at each other and waved in a generally southerly direction. They had no idea, but thought it might be that way.<\/p>\n

So we walked, coming across, I think, the old site of the North American College (or maybe that was on another walk – I’m not sure) in the process, and one or two other interesting churches. But no Gaspar. Finally, we turned a corner and found ourselves looking at the Trevi from the opposite direction from which we started – and there it was.<\/a> About 50 meters, I think, from the spot where we’d been talking to the police. Grazie, guys. Know your beat. Impressive.<\/p>\n

It’s small, as you can tell from the pictures – as so many of these Roman churches are, with facades that don’t seem to indicate much, but which, once you step inside, are bursting with decoration, art and energy. The HQ of the Society was here for many years. To the left is the shrine containing the remains of St. Gaspar – it’s in the typical sleeping-under-the-altar style, but a little different than others because the figure of St. Gaspar is some sort of metal (in or under which I suppose the remains are encased), and it’s not behind glass – it’s right there, so that as you kneel in prayer, you can touch – if you want to. Which, of course, Joseph did, as Michael told him that this was a "real superhero" – and if you read the stories of St. Gaspar’s life, you’ll see what he meant. <\/p>\n

So, full circle in a sense. St. Gaspar has followed us around for six years now, and we, at the end of our Roman journey, followed him to where his earthly body rests.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In comments below, Fr. Keyes, aka The New Gasparian, asked if in our Trevi Fountain wanderings, we came across St. Gaspar del Bufalo. Well, as a matter of fact that’s one of the main reasons we returned. Ever since we moved up here, St. Gaspar del Bufalo has been a part of our consciousness in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nSt. Gaspar - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"St. Gaspar - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In comments below, Fr. Keyes, aka The New Gasparian, asked if in our Trevi Fountain wanderings, we came across St. Gaspar del Bufalo. Well, as a matter of fact that’s one of the main reasons we returned. Ever since we moved up here, St. Gaspar del Bufalo has been a part of our consciousness in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-03-09T08:33:59+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"St. Gaspar - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"St. Gaspar - Via Media","og_description":"In comments below, Fr. Keyes, aka The New Gasparian, asked if in our Trevi Fountain wanderings, we came across St. Gaspar del Bufalo. Well, as a matter of fact that’s one of the main reasons we returned. Ever since we moved up here, St. Gaspar del Bufalo has been a part of our consciousness in…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-03-09T08:33:59+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html","name":"St. Gaspar - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-03-09T08:33:59+00:00","dateModified":"2006-03-09T08:33:59+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/03\/st-gaspar-1.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"St. Gaspar"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4224"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4224\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}