Pontifical Scot’s College, Rome.

23 Apr

Men praying in a Catholic church, beams of light backlighting them. — *Scot's College Chapel, Rome, Italy, January 2000. © Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert.*

Back in 2000, when magazines still commissioned nice reportage documentary photography pieces, I was called by a picture editor I regularly worked for and asked the lovely question, “Can you go to Rome?”.

The assignment was to visit Pontifical Scot’s College in Rome, founded on 5th December 1600 by Pope Clement VIII, the “college [acts] as a seminary preparing men for the priesthood and for service in the Church’s mission in Scotland.” A great photography assignment for myself, another aspect of Scottish life to look at, to photograph and see.

I spent a few days there, photographing a Sunday mass with Bishop Mario Conti, then of Aberdeen. I remember Bishop Conti asking me if I had enjoyed the Mass service that Sunday, and I’d replied I enjoy the singing and the smell of insence from the thurible. “Ah”, he replied, “you like the bells and smells.” It always stuck with me that line.

A Bishop in his cassock places incense in a thurible helped by colleagues. — *Bishop Mario Conti (centre), Scot's College Chapel, Rome, Italy, January 2000. © Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert.*

*Scot's College Chapel, Rome, Italy, January 2000. © Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert.*

I also with some young students of the seminary college, photographing them in their library studies, in their rooms, and in St Peter’s Square beside the Vatican. And of course eating pasta and drinking espresso’s with the, I wonder how life turned out for them, where their studies and religion took them?