Oscar, wanting to ease the grieving newcomer’s transition, introduced himself. “Would you like to see your berth?”
The distressed youth nodded.
“Come. I’ll show you.” Oscar led the way to their bunks.
The next morning at breakfast, Oscar sat with Alfonso and offered to help communicate with the waiter. “That’s burro in Italian,” Oscar said, pointing, and the two boys laughed. Who would have thought the Spanish word for either donkey or stupid person meant butter in Italian? Oscar picked up an apple. “Mela,” he said, and Alfonso repeated it.35
Oscar, Alfonso, Mauro, and Alberto were four of about a dozen young Latin Americans crossing the Atlantic for seminary studies under Jesuit professors at the Gregorian University. Also aboard were some twenty priests and monks, as well as the nuncio of El Salvador.36
“Want to see the movie with me?” Alfonso asked Oscar one evening.
“I’m going to say the rosary on deck, if you’d like to do that instead,” Oscar replied.
“Maybe some other time,” Alfonso said as he headed to the theater.
Besides inviting others to pray the rosary in the evenings, Oscar assisted priests with two or three masses each morning. His devotion to spiritual matters became obvious to other passengers during the eleven-day crossing.
Once in Rome, the Latin American seminarians made their way to the Pontificial Colegio Pío Latino Americano, a fifty-year-old three-story building.37 The neoclassical edifice, a city block in size, next to the Tiber River and close to the Vatican, served as both a home-away-from-home and a structured learning environment for the students who lived in it under the guidance of Jesuit priests.
After a three-year separation, Oscar was thrilled to meet up again with his friend Rafael Valladares, who offered to show the newcomers around. “Your new home is spacious, as you can see,” Rafael told them, “but it’s drafty. So it’s too hot in summer and too cold in winter. As you’ll find out soon enough.”
Rafael showed them the dorms and the classrooms. “We attend our course lectures at the Gregorian University, but often the real learning takes place in these classrooms.”
“How so?” Oscar asked.
“Well, the university lectures aren’t always easy to understand. The Jesuit scholars who give them come from many countries. Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the United States. And of course from here in Italy.”
“So, why’s that a problem?” Mauro asked. “They all lecture in Latin, right?”
“Latin, yes, but accented in each professor’s native tongue. Some are much easier to understand than others. We had one professor with such a thick accent we feared we’d fail his course.” Rafael swiped his forehead in mock fear. “And the professors lecture old-fashioned style.”38
“What does that mean?” one asked.
“They lecture, then leave. No time for questions.”
“So what do you do when you can’t understand the professor?” Oscar asked.
“That’s where these classrooms come in.” Rafael nodded to the blackboard at the front of the room. “The Jesuit fathers divide each year’s class into four smaller groups, which they call camerate.39 Then they meet with each camerata to review and discuss the lectures.”
“In Latin or Spanish?” one asked.
Rafael rolled his eyes. “In Spanish, of course. That was one reason why the Jesuits built this colegio—to help us Spanish-speaking Latin Americans make it through seminary.”
Oscar turned to the youth who had asked the question. “Remember. The students who attend the Gregorian University come from around the world, and Latin is our common language,” he said soothingly.
The youth hit his forehead with his palm. “Of course! What a burro I am!”
But can he dance?
Rafael led them to a wide double door. When he opened it, Oscar gasped to see a lovely theatre.
“Our Jesuit fathers want to make sure we learn to speak comfortably in public,” Rafael told the newcomers. “They assign us weekly performances. The camerate compete with one another.”
“What kind of performances?”
“You name it. Everything from classical plays to parodies—spoofs, that is—and musical theater, including operettas and zarzuelas.”
“What’s a zarzuela?” Oscar asked, baffled.
“It’s like a Spanish stew, with a bit of everything thrown in. Speaking, dancing, singing. Both opera and popular music.” When Oscar’s brow knit, Rafael said, “Don’t worry, Oscar. You’ll do fine, with all your musical talent. Not as well as me, maybe, but . . .”
Rafael laughed and Oscar joined in. He was glad to be with his lighthearted friend again, even though Rafael could not allay his fear of tripping over his own feet in some dance.
“We also use this theatre to celebrate birthdays, when the camerate take turns performing as choruses. At Christmas, the teams compete in building nacimientos, nativity scenes. Some get really clever, rigging up lights for their mangers or devising ways to make some of the figures move.
“Let me show you the chapel. It’s also two stories tall.” Holding open its door, Rafael said, “Some of you may be ordained in this very chapel.”
“Seems a long way off,” Oscar commented.
“Now it does,” Rafael agreed. “But once courses begin, you’ll wish you had even more time to cram everything in.”
“What about fun?” Alfonso asked.
“Fun? You think they sent you to Rome to have a good time?” Rafael teased. “Let me show you the area set aside for billiards, chess, and table tennis. And the soccer and basketball courts.”
Rafael’s tour ended in the dining room, in time for the evening meal.
The students who lodged at the Colegio Pío Latino Americano ate their meals in silence. They took turns reading aloud from classical literature while the other students ate, another exercise to help them develop ease in speaking in front of others. Even with a couple years of seminary under his belt, Oscar seemed to struggle with public speaking. On a notecard of November 23, 1940, he wrote, “[a seminary companion] tells me I’m a torrent of emotion . . . because my voice trembled nervously just reading the title of the book in my hands.” Two days later, however, he wrote, “Today I read in the refectory. My nerves were calmer.”40
The Jesuit fathers ran the combined boardinghouse and school as a large family, like the Claretian brothers at the minor seminary had done. Firm and disciplined but kind, they took every opportunity to expand the horizons of the some hundred fifty seminarians in their care. They also planned recreational outings.
On trips to the beach, Oscar, a strong swimmer, offered swim lessons to his companions. Once, he invited fellow seminarians to swim out to a rock. He arrived first. He sat on the boulder but quickly rocketed off: it was covered with spiny sea urchins. Unable to sit for several days, the stoical Oscar didn’t tell his classmates what had happened. The Jesuit brother who ran the colegio’s infirmary, however, leaked