On a bookcase in my study hangs a watercolor done by my father during a visit to Rome in 1950. He had gone for the Jubilee Year and was traveling with his mother, Jane, and his Aunt Kit. The watercolor was painted quickly in St. Peter’s Basilica, and it shows Pope Pius XII being carried by footmen on his sedia gestatoria, blessing the crowd to the right and left.
Another memento from that same trip has gone missing, but it used to be displayed among family photos in my father’s studio, and I remember it vividly: a black-and-white picture of Jane and Kit with the Pope. Pius stands facing the camera in a white cassock, two fingers of his right hand raised in benediction, his gaze penetrating and implacable. Jane and Kit stand on either side, looking dowdy in black dresses and veils (not really an Irish thing). The photographer has managed to catch both of them just as their eyes blinked shut.
