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Local video leads to Rome By Michelle Martin When Father Daniel Whiteside made a pilgrimage to Rome in 1998, he did more than bring home a few snapshots. He starred in a documentary about the experience. “Pilgrimage to Rome: Journey into Jubilee” will air at 6 p.m. April 9 on WTTW-Channel 11. “I felt a connection to people of all time there,” said Whiteside, pastor of St. Catherine of Siena-St. Lucy Parish in Oak Park. “What we’d like to pass on to people is that, when you go on pilgrimage, what you end up doing is feeling a connectedness in times of history, and also that we are part of a larger pilgrimage, this thing we call the pilgrimage of humanity.” The film was written and produced by Chicagoan Barbara Zeman of Word Works. Zeman and Whiteside knew one another from when both were at St. Josaphat Parish. Zeman, who had just finished a master’s degree in theology, wanted to bring her faith to a wider audience. Whiteside wanted to travel to Rome in advance of the jubilee year. Zeman had studied in Rome before traveling there with Whiteside and a film crew; it was Whiteside’s first look at the Eternal City. “We said, not everybody can go to Rome, so why don’t I go and we’ll make a film of it?” Whiteside said. The result, Zeman said, is somewhere between a strictly religious program and a travel video. There are scenes of the Trevi fountain, exchanges between Whiteside and Roman merchants and footage of St.Peter’s Basilica, the Pantheon and the Roman Forum. But there also is footage of Whiteside celebrating Mass at St. Bartholomew Church, interviews with U.S. priests living and teaching in Rome, and sequences from the canonization of Edith Stein and the beatification of Mother Theodore Guerin. For Zeman, the high point was the segment filmed at the Colosseum. Although she had spent time in Rome, she never had been able to bring herself to set foot inside it. “I guess it was because so many people were martyred there,” she said. “I really felt that.” Whiteside also felt the power of the Colosseum, but his favorite place was the Pantheon. “The foundation was built in the first century before Christ, for a temple to the Roman sun god, and it’s still there,” he said. The rest of the edifice was rebuilt in the first century after Christ, and it was later turned into a church. Walking the ancient streets and standing in the ancient buildings helped Whiteside connect to the earliest days of the Catholic faith, he said, like people sometimes visit their childhood homes to reconnect to the early days of their own lives. “That’s what pilgrimage is about,” Zeman said. “But people don’t have to go to Rome. They can go on a pilgrimage in their own hearts.” The video will be available after April 9 by calling 1-800-548-7000. Cost is $24.95 plus shipping and handling.
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