Tuesday of the Fifth Week of Lent at St Mary in via Lata

If we could have stood in front of this church two millennia ago looking out on the Via del Corso, a parade of history would have passed before us: not only Caesar coming into the city after crossing the Rubicon and Constantine after his victory as Milvian Bridge, but also a continuous stream of ordinary folk, among whom may well have been the great Apostle to the Gentiles, St. Paul.  Tradition holds that he stayed here for part of his time in Rome.  Archeologists have found remains dating back to the first century A.D. beneath the church, possibly being part of the actual house in which St. Paul stayed.  The original church had the opposite orientation as the current one, with the sanctuary being closer to the Via del Corso, also known as the Via Lata or “wide street” because this was one of the largest streets in the city at the time.  Around this time, this church became used for the stational Mass of today, as the assigned station, St. Cyricaus, had by then fallen into ruin (From: Procedamus in Pacem, PNAC).