Helen’s stairs, the news, and back-to-school

Hey everybody,

Near the Lateran basilica in Rome there is a marble staircase, covered in wood, which pilgrims climb on their knees.

At the top is a small chapel dedicated to St. Lawrence, though that’s not why people come, and few people visit the little space for very long.

They come instead because of the historical legacy of those stairs, the scala sancta, which custom says are the stairs of Pilate’s praetorium in Jerusalem, climbed by Christ the Lord on his way to trial, shortly before he climbed Calvary.

The custom says, too, that the stairs were brought to Rome in the fourth century by St. Helena, the possibly-English princess who was the mother of Constantine, who went to Jerusalem in her 70s, and is said to have discovered the true cross of Christ, among many other relics.

That custom has made the stairs a place of deep devotion for Catholics on pilgrimage to Rome; a place that feels physically connected to the passion of the savior.

Tracing each step of the stairs’ provenance isn’t easy. The actual staircase seems to have been installed in the Lateran Palace for hundreds of years before