IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF IGNATIUS - 4 days in Rome

We offer a walking tour of Rome by night which takes in the Tiber, St Peter's, Castel Sant Angelo, Piazza Novona and perhaps the Trevi Fountain.

Hopefully we will manage to book a visit to the SCAVI, the underground excavations of St Peter's which end at St Peter's Tomb.

We also visit the Vatican Museum, where among a vast aray of exhibits we can see the rooms where St Ignatius would have met the Pope, probably the Borgia appartments and what for him would have been the newly completed Sistine Chapel.

We usually manage to persuade Ignatius' successor as superior general of the Jesuits, Fr Adolfo Nicholás to join us on the roof of the Curia where we have a group photo taken with St Peters as a backdrop, in 2011 a rather bright setting sun meant we had to have the Papal apartments as the backdrop.

We also book to celebrate Mass in the rooms of the early Jesuits where Ignatius lived for 15 years as Jesuit general and eventually died.

Hopefully too, we shall visit St Mary Major where Ignatius celebrated his first Mass.  The oldest Basilica of its style still standing.

With a bit of luck there will be time to see Ancient Rome or any other sites in this fasinating city that interests you. Evenings are free for a well earned rest or time off with friends.

Rome does entail quite a lot of walking around the cobbles of the City, a little climbing up one of the seven hills; steps too are not unknown, though we usually miss out the Spanish Steps.  So people who are getting on in years and would find walking at a steady pace for about an hour too strenuous would find the pilgrimage a strain.

From Rome we travel to the UK for our flight home.