On Jan. 25, 1873, on the Feast of the Conversion of St. Paul, workers laid the cornerstone of St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church, the first non-Roman Catholic church built inside Rome’s ancient walls.
The land was purchased, and construction began in 1872, two years after Italian forces captured Rome and the unification of Italy was complete, which brought a constitution protecting religious freedom and the end of papal rule in the city. In March 1876, the red brick and travertine Gothic Revival church was consecrated.
St. Paul’s will celebrate the consecration’s 150th anniversary year with a special Evening Prayer on June 26. California Bishop Austin K. Rios, who served 12 years as St. Paul’s priest-in-charge, will preach, and Bishop Mark Edington of the Convocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe will preside.
Although the church’s founders leaned into Protestantism and displayed a somewhat antagonist need to express their own brand of catholicism in the eternal city, over time St. Paul’s was called both to represent The Episcopal Church in Rome and to communicate its understanding of catholicism as not just the Vatican or the Roman Catholic Church, but the larger calling as presented in the 1979 Book of Common Prayer, emphasizing parallel liturgies, shared roots and Catholic-Anglican ecumenism, Rios told Episcopal News Service. To read more, click here
