An Adventure to Napoli

Campus Life Update

As January came to a close, the students prepared for a weekend trip to Naples. They had spent the week leading up to this deciding where to go for the three day weekend, floating ideas such as Prague, Florence, or Albania. After deciding on Naples, they spent the rest of the week planning it, from where they were staying to what they were going to go see. After a long day of travel the first day, they finally arrived in Naples, and after finding their apartment, went to try Neapolitan pizza at a restaurant recommended by locals. Since Naples is known for its pizza, this was the perfect opportunity to find out if the rumors about it were true; they definitely were. Neapolitan pizza has a genuine reason for its fame as the best of the best.

The next day, after a short ride to Pompeii, the group went to mass at the Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Rosary. It is currently a Marian pilgrimage site, with the lay member who restored it, St. Bartolo Longo, just recently canonized by Pope Leo. St. Bartolo Longo was a wealthy man, born and raised to be a lawyer in the mid-1800’s. As a young man, he turned from the faith and became a Satanic priest, selling his soul to a devil. He was brought back to the Church through the prayers of his family and, ironically, since he had previously hated the Dominicans, the influence of a Dominican priest. After his conversion, he realized that his soul still belonged to the enemy; upon finding a promise from Mary that anyone who consecrated their life to the rosary would be saved, Longo then dedicated the rest of his life to teaching the Rosary. His research eventually begot the Luminous Mysteries. As part of his dedication, he restored the now beautiful Sanctuary of the Blessed Virgin of the Holy Rosary in Pompeii.

From there, the group went to have a small coffee break in one of the small bars near the church. The rest of the day was spent exploring the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii, finding everything from old villas to the plaster models of the people who were buried in the ashes. The solidified ash blocks used for these plaster models were first discovered in the 1960’s. Breaking them open and finding voids inside, archeologist Giuseppe Fiorelli used them to make casts for plaster models in the exact positions of the people that were buried under the ashes of Pompeii. On the last day of the trip our travelers spent the morning exploring the city of Naples, visiting the Duomo and enjoying cornetti before heading back to campus.