Welcome back to the Word on Fire show. I'm Brandon Vot, the host, the content director at Word on Fire.

And we are live, recording this from the Eternal City Rome. I'm here sitting across a little table from Bishop Robert Barron, the new

Doctor Bishop Robert Barron. We'll talk about that here in a moment. Bishop Barron, good to be with you.

Hey Brandon, always great to be with you.

We've done a lot. We just landed in Rome yesterday. It feels like five days ago.

I think about a week ago, yeah.

But you've been doing some great things. And I wanted to share many of them here with our listeners.

So first of all, we landed in Rome after these long flights, you coming from California with Joe Goura, our producer, me coming from Orlando.

But then one of the first things we were able to do, we landed on Ash Wednesday.

And before we arrived, I said, what are we going to do about mass? And you said, hey, you know, Pope Francis usually, or the Pope usually says mass on Ash Wednesday in Santa

Sabina, we're able to get tickets there. Tell a little bit about that experience.

Yeah, I knew about this, you know, from previous experience. And I said, well, as long as we're there on Ash Wednesday, why don't we try and get in?

And frankly, I didn't think it'd be that hard. I thought it's a big old basilica that we just kind of, you know, slip in and be there.

Of course, it turned out to be rather difficult because there's a big crowd. And, but I've got some Dominican friends. And so I pulled some strings there and we got tickets.

And I couldn't participate really the way a bishop is supposed to because I would have brought the, what's called the choir dress, which is a very elaborate dress. And I didn't have that.

So what I did is I just went with you and with Joe. And we got to a lot of police barricades, thanks in part to my being a bishop and in part to our friend Veronica, who's our fixer over here. And she can, you know, speak Italian to everybody.

And so we finally got in the church. But then we were showing these seats like way in the back corner behind pillars. And we basically see nothing.

But I had the magic of pectoral cross on, you know, the Bishop's all doors. And the Italians, it's interesting, especially liturgy. We've got a very clear sense of like order and hierarchy. And it just offended sensibilities to our favor that a bishop was sitting with the back of the church.

So we were kind of being invited ever further up into the church. And finally we got really splendid seats right right off the aisle. And you know, we'd see everything and the procession, which included a lot of Dominican friars and then a lot of the bishops and Cardinals. And finally Pope Francis came right by us.

So it was cool. And it was the liturgy with the Pope. And then we received ashes in the European style on your head, not on your forehead, but like on the top of your head.

Anyway, it was it was a great way to begin our trip.

You know, it's so different being here in Italy and seeing the way people reverence bishops and priests not saying they don't do that in America. But it's on a different level here.

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