If you walk out of your hotel in Rome first thing in the morning, you will find within five minutes a glorious Renaissance church of Mary. (Santa Maria in Aquiro). There were only three of us in the side chapel. Before the reading of the liturgy, we are invited to the back of the Church. I understood why because next thing the priest summons all of us forward to do the readings. Luckily I am not in the first row or I would have had to do it. I can just about read and pronounce Italian but the thought of doing it in public can terrify you.

Afterwards the priest gave us a little card in honour of Santa Maria di Lourdes. “Defendi i deboli, conferma gli innocenti, converti i peccatori, risana gli infermi, consola gli affliti.”

The point of course is that St. John Bosco loved children and Mary chose to appear to a child, Bernadette.

Unless you change and become like little children you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

(Matthew 18:1-5)