He particularly enjoyed the outdoor marketplaces, especially the ones on the Campo dei Fiori. And there were the colors. Always the colors. The Vespas in yellow, green, and bright red; the colorful flags and balloons everywhere in the city; the red strawberries, green melons, blueberries, and oranges in the markets; the brightly colored canned goods on shelves in the open mobile stores; the horse-drawn blue chariots with their fire engine red wheels; the donkeys festooned with ribbons and bows that pull the tourist carts; and the yellow Fiats, the white-robed nuns, the golden arches, and the pale green statues.

There were the bridges along the Tiber River at sunset. The Piazza di Spagna, the Trevi Fountain where Father Brady threw a coin, and the magnificent Sistine Chapel and its most famous mural, The Creation of Adam.

Father Brady was simply overwhelmed.

The priest went to school in a small room within the Museo d’Arte on the Piazza Santa Marta. He slept in a dormitory across the street above the Papal Guards. His teachers were uniformly humorless and strict, and taught in either Italian or Latin, languages Father Brady spoke fluently.

Father Brady loved his daily routine. Waking and going to Mass at dawn. Then to school, where he relished learning the form and arrangement of public worship as set down by the Catholic Church in the Scriptures. He savored the study of canon law and the sacrament. But what he delighted in most was the subject of moral theology: mastering consciously and properly informed choices as described in the traditions of the church and the application of the teachings of Jesus Christ to modern everyday situations. When writing to friends at home, Father Brady would repeatedly say his intellectual pursuit at the Vatican was, as far as he was concerned, heaven here on earth.

It was during Father Brady’s first months in Rome that the priest’s father, Flynn Brady, died of a massive heart attack. The coronary took place in the family row house on Stoneway Lane. Flynn had just finished his third shot of whiskey when the attack occurred. The shot glass fell out of his hand and rolled under his armchair.

Not many family or friends attended Flynn Brady’s funeral, mainly because Flynn Brady didn’t have many family or friends who cared that much about him. Just a few employees from his appliance company and a brother from Detroit. In Rome, Father Daniel Patrick Brady said a prayer for him in the church of Santa Maria in Traspon-ina on the Via d. Conciliazione in Vatican City.

After Father Brady prayed in the church of Santa Maria in Traspontina for his father’s soul, he went to the Spanish Steps to try to recall the nicer attributes and traits of Flynn Brady. The priest’s favorite place in all of Rome was the Spanish Steps. Father Brady spent as much time there as he could. He found the steps a good place to relax and think. The hundred-and-eighty-degree view of the city from the top of the steps constantly amazed him. The way the buildings of Rome were bathed in seemingly perpetual sunlight. Their amazing ocher and terra-cotta colors practically blinding him. It was all a living miracle. Father Brady could never describe the view of Rome from the Spanish Steps to his satisfaction.