As he sat this morning in the caliginous chapel of San Filippo Benizzi, which was tucked away in a corner of Piazza Santissima Annunziata, John admired the large picture of the assumptive Virgin, adored by Sts Jerome and Francis poverino – the titular saints of the confraternity that formed the presiding spirit here – as well as the parallel pews, the altar that had not been turned round to face the congregation and, above all, the general aura of crumbling poetic grandeur. He essayed to enact convincingly the motions of the Tridentine Mass, which had been abandoned with such amnesiac vigour by the American clergy that he, who had been born in 1959, was utterly unfamiliar with the ritual. Though he had studied Greek and Latin for four years at the school run by the detested Christian Broth
