We visited Rome today. We took a 10-hour tour of St. John the Lateran and the Vatican. Danita and I both enjoyed St. John very much. The Vatican was immensely crowded. The feeling was of being pushed through a commercial museum.

I didn’t know anything about St. John. It was established by Constantine as the residence of the Pope around 300 AD. Popes continued to live there until the Western Schism around 1300 AD, when the Papacy moved to Avignon, France. St. Johns was the residence of the Pope for nearly 1,000 years. The Vatican has a couple hundred years to go before it reaches this milestone.

I didn’t get man pictures from the Vatican. I managed to grab a telephoto shot of the Pieta, but it was behind heavy glass, poorly lit, impossible to get near … altogether an inferior experience, as was all of the Vatican. I’ll let the pictures tell the rest of the story.