ONE AFTERNOON, IN THE middle of our stay at the Franciscan hostel and after a full day of visiting sites on the Sea of Galilee, George and I found ourselves with a few free hours before dinner. Scouting around for a place to pray, I walked onto the veranda of the chapel that serves as the centerpiece of the complex. Overlooking the lake from an impressive height, the Church of the Beatitudes was designed in 1938 by the Italian architect Antonio Barluzzi. Its construction was funded by—of all people—Benito Mussolini, who took great interest in the Holy Land.1 The stone chapel, capped by a dark gray dome, is octagonal-shaped, with each of its eight sides commemorating one of the Beatitudes. I wasn’t a fan of the chapel’s chilly marble interior, and the Mussolini connection also made it more difficult for me to meditate. I pictured Il Duce poring over the architectural plans and pounding his fist on the table in disagreement. On the other hand, Barluzzi surrounded his chapel with a magnificent colonnaded portico, a spot that is, according to Murphy-O’Connor’s guidebook, “the best place from which to contemplate the spiritual dimension of the lake; one can see virtually all the places in which Jesus lived and worked.”2 Alone on the shaded porch, I had a commanding view of Jesus’s life in Galilee.
