I’ve been working on my unpublished spiritual memoir today, Loving God without a Label, and thinking about my three visits to St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

I traveled to the Eternal City–and the Vatican City–at very different times in my life and I reacted to the seat of Catholicism in very different ways.

In 1970, I was fourteen years-old, touring Europe with my family. My teacher mother had insisted we visit museums and climb church towers throughout the ten weeks we camped around the continent. I’d seen a lot of churches by the time we got to Rome and while I realized St. Peter’s was the mother church, I wasn’t as enthusiastic as my Mom had hoped–until I got inside.

I was determined to get inside because in those days of fashionable mini-skirts and tank tops, I had been turned away two days before at St. Mark’s Basilica in Venice. Fussing and fuming that the most devout Catholic in the family couldn’t get into the church, I had resolved to dress in a more conservative style when we got to Rome. The nun held up the ruler when she saw me coming in Rome, but my skirt got past.

We started in the Vatican Museum and knowing the importance of the Sistine Chapel–years before it was restored to its current glory–we determined to experience it with as few tourists as possible. As a result, we got in line early for the museum and once inside, bolted to the Sistine Chapel. We wanted to be the first ones there, enjoying the paintings before anyone else arrived.

In 1970, we followed a painted line that wound through the museum–running as fast as we could past artwork of exquisite beauty. We only slowed down when we got to the hall of maps and couldn’t believe the glorious mosaics on the wall. But other tourists were coming after us, so we picked up the pace and skidded into the tall, narrow empty chapel.

We cheered. The guards told us to hush.

Panting, we looked around. I recognized God and Adam on the ceiling and a few other stories–though God tossing Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden didn’t seem as impressive as it should have. Everything wore the grime and smoke of the previous 300 years, and so it was difficult to see why I should be so impressed.

But we were in and in hushed voices, examined what we could see. Afterwards, we wandered back along the galleries and paused to admire paintings. We were gearing up for the big visit to the actual basilica–St. Peter’s isn’t really a cathedral. We particularly wanted to see Michelangelo’s Pieta.

In 1970, the Pieta had not been attacked by an insane man with a hammer and we walked right up to it. We’d already seen Michelangelo’s masterpiece at the New York World’s Fair in 1964 (It sailed to New York packed in a giant crate full of ping pong balls. The curators wanted to be able to retrieve the statue if the ship went down and they thought the ping pong balls would supply the lift needed). The statue looked the same to me, but I could appreciate it more standing right beside it, rather than trying to see it behind glass as we rode a moving walkway.

I felt proud to be in such a glorious church that belonged to my faith. I stared at tourists and wondered what they thought of the magnificent building and felt a little bit of ownership. Teenagers can be obnoxious that way.

My brothers and I  wanted to go to the top of the basilica where the apostles stared down, but my parents didn’t think the trip justified the cost. We wanted to go to the basement to see where Saint Peter was buried, but my parents thought our catacomb trip would be sufficient for admiring old bones.

So we wandered and admired and then checked “St. Peter’s” off the list. My mom bought a charm from Vatican City.

On this trip, St. Peter’s was a museum, not a house of worship, and a spot that fed my pride in being a Catholic. We were religious tourists admiring works of art and jockeying with other visitors. We saw flocks of nuns following guides and I wondered where you actually heard Mass in the large, echoing building. Later, I realized the small chapels to the sides were the places to worship. That day, however, we were overawed by the magnificence of the church.

My father was a history-lover and he pointed out the immense size had been designed to inspire awe and fear in the populace. Built over 100 years and finished in 1626, it still is the largest Christian church in the world. We were there for one afternoon in 1970, not nearly long enough to appreciate much about it. But the seed had been planted and when I returned fourteen years later, I had a better idea of how to spend my time.

Of course I had no idea, in 1970, how different I would view God, religion and the Catholic church.

Next time: Traveler’s Tales: Did You Take that Altar out of the Book of Revelation?