For Catholics on the Go, Airport in Rome Offers a Quick-Stop Salvation

It’s not easy to spot, squeezed between international check-in counters here at Rome’s busy airport. But for Roman Catholic sinners in transit, the tiny chapel near the VIP lounge offers quick-stop salvation.

Catholic authorities have put the airport chapel on a temporary par with Rome’s four great basilicas: St. Peter’s, St. John Lateran, St. Paul’s Outside the Walls and St. Mary Major. Penitents who pray at any of these places this year can gain a plenary indulgence--an ancient, controversial form of church-granted amnesty that Pope John Paul II has restored to prominence for Holy Year 2000.

In Catholic teaching, a sinner who confesses still faces punishment on Earth or in purgatory. A plenary indulgence cleanses the repentant sinner’s soul, making it eligible for passage into heaven.

Getting such an indulgence has been a goal of pilgrimages to Rome since 1300, the first of the church’s periodic yearlong faith revivals that are now held every quarter-century.

Since the current Holy Year began on Christmas Eve, more than 3.5 million pilgrims have visited the four basilicas. Judging from the visitors book, a few thousand have popped into the chapel at the Leonardo da Vinci International Airport for at least a few minutes of quiet prayer, insulated from the bustle outside by smoked-glass doors and recorded Gregorian chants.

One recent weekday morning, Arkadias Arnaud, a 27-year-old Frenchman working in Rome, knelt here for an hour after checking in early for a vacation flight to San Francisco.

Jose M. Blanco, 23, a Spanish-born writer, prayed upon arrival from New York while waiting for a Rome-bound pilgrim on another flight.

“There’s a great aspiration to cleanse the soul,” said Father Giorgio Rizzieri, the airport chaplain, who urges travelers to spend at least 30 minutes in prayer if they are seeking an indulgence. “They’re usually in a hurry. This is what I call a ministry of the moment.”

The idea of a shortcut to paradise is precisely what irritates liberal Catholics, who had hoped that the tradition of indulgences--downplayed by the church after the Second Vatican Council reforms of the 1960s--would fade away.

The chapel is just one example of how John Paul, in making penitence a theme of this Holy Year, has revived and modified the tradition to make it more accessible than ever.

Unlike early pilgrims who dodged bandits and warlords during the weeks-long trek to Rome, today’s Catholics can come in spirit. For the first time, they may gain Holy Year indulgences by praying at a designated church or shrine in their home diocese.

Prayer is only part of the ritual, which may be completed over several days. Also required are confession, communion and an act of charity for the poor or an act of private sacrifice, such as giving up smoking for a day.

Despite John Paul’s emphasis, indulgences are not high on the list of reasons why American Catholics are coming to Rome, said Paul Robichaud, an American priest who gives orientations for pilgrims at his Roman parish.

“They really want to experience these holy places and maybe see the pope,” he said.

“Most of them don’t know how to get an indulgence. We tell them. We take them through the requirements. Then they get interested,” he said.

Michael Billoni, 44, who runs a public relations business in Buffalo, N.Y., said he and his mother obtained indulgences as they visited each of the basilicas, donated warm clothes to a Roman orphanage and stopped at the airport chapel before leaving.

“It gave me a feeling of strength, coming away closer to God,” said Billoni, a sports fan who missed the Super Bowl to make the pilgrimage.

David Mullany, 38, a Catholic aid worker leaving Yugoslavia, found refuge in the airport chapel during a long layover on his way home to Australia, passing under a multilingual notice above the door that reads: “Oh, you who are entering, gain all hope!”

Was he there for an indulgence? “I don’t believe in them; Martin Luther was right,” he replied, recalling the theologian who rebelled against the sale of indulgences and started the Protestant Reformation. “To be saved, it’s more important how you live your life.”