"But we must win this battle," he began. "Unless... the one who promised to help us is such a person! Ah, I'm straining my eyes waiting—why hasn't the other one arrived yet?"
—Dante, Inferno
In the summer of AD 358, snow was said to have fallen atop Esquiline Hill. To commemorate this event, every August 5, the Basilica of Saint Mary Major, one of Rome's four major papal basilicas, scattered white flower petals from its paneled ceiling.
If one came from the central station, the first stop in Rome was the Basilica of Saint Mary Major.
The first time Joseph saw it, he inexplicably thought of Waterloo Bridge.
He could not remember when he had watched it, but one scene had remained impossible to erase from his mind.
The beautiful ballerina stood beside the platform, watching train after train pass before her eyes.
She was both waiting and searching. Other women stood beside the heroine, wearing the same expressions.
Some of those women were looking for their husbands, some for their sons, and some for their fathers.
Had Joseph lived in that era, as a priest, he too would have gone to the battlefield with the army.
Not everyone could make it home safely. Four hundred thousand Americans had remained forever in lands far from home.
Before they died, they would call out all manner of names to fight the fear death brought them. If someone called for God, then even amid a barrage of artillery fire, Joseph would have run to their side and sent them to The Paradise.
To die alone was terrifying. At Christmas in 1914, World War I had already been underway for five months. The German and British armies had reached a stalemate, and Pope Benedict XV declared a ceasefire for that day "in the