Originally published at National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: If the goal is evangelizing a broken world with the healing, saving message of the Gospel, my bet is on the Pizza Group.
ROME — Pizza in the Eternal City tends to exemplify a proposition I have long defended: What crossed the Atlantic going west was usually improved in the process. I like Roman pizza, as I like Rome, but I like New York pizza, Chicago pizza, Detroit pizza, and just about every other variant of American pizza — Hawaiian excepted — more. Still, when in Rome, do as the Romans. So in recent years, I have formed the happy habit of dining with a cadre of young friends I have dubbed the Pizza Group on each of my Roman excursions.
We meet in the early evening at the apartment in which I stay, and for an hour, we share wine, snacks, recent personal histories and observations — sometimes sardonic — on matters ecclesiastical, cultural and political. Then we decamp across the Borgo Pio to a local trattoria, where most of us order pizza — there is one spaghetti carbonara addict among us — and continue the conversation.
The group is largely European, flavored by fellow
