<em>Guided by grace and humour.</em>
In the Stars the Glory of His Eyes: Tales of an Irish Tour Guide in Rome
K Troy
Ignatius Press, £13.99, 267 pages
British readers of a certain vintage may remember a BBC radio comedy starring Stephen K Amos, the son of hard-working first-generation Nigerian immigrants, reminiscing about his experiences growing up black and gay in south London in the early 1980s. In one memorable episode, he is given the task of looking after the school rabbit over a weekend; a glorious collision of cultural expectations ensues, which culminates in his no-nonsense, straight-talking mother turning it into a stew.
A few years ago, Amos, by then a celebrity, made a pilgrimage to Rome along the Via Francigena; he had an audience with Pope Francis, and told him that “as a gay man, I don’t feel accepted”. The Holy Father told him that “giving the adjective to the noun, this is not good. We are all human beings and have dignity. It does not matter who you are or how you live your life, you do not lose your dignity. There are people that prefer to select or discard people because of the adjective – these people don’t have a human heart.”
The full account of their conversation is still available online; in many ways, it prefigured some of the wider issues that have come to the fore in the preparations for the Synod on Synodality. As I write this, its delegates are beginning to flood into Rome, and by the time it appears they will be on their way home again, by which time much more ink will have been spilled. I mention all this because the sitcom I started this with is called What Does the K Stand For? – it turns out to be Kehinde.
The same question came to my mind when I took this book out of its publishers’ packaging: “by K Troy”. In this case it is Kieran – not an enormous surprise for an Irishman with the initial K, but odd for a front cover. We discover this a little way in, when an elderly priest called Father Higgins recognises him in a maelstrom at Dublin airport, and calls him by his name. It’s only later that the Philip-Nathanael element of their meeting presents itself.
Stephen K Amos, Kieran Troy, Father Higgins, synod delegates – all on their way to Rome, each of them a pilgrim in one way or another. Troy tells his tales, and those of the people whom he guides around the holy sites, with deep insight and good humour. His faith sits unfussily alongside his profession. In all the challenges that come with shepherding pilgrims (a task that comes across as being much like herding cats), he retains a child-like wonder at his discernment of God’s work in action.
Throughout the book you get the feeling that Troy is running his business with God as its senior partner. I think this might be down to his Irishness – an old-fashioned sort where life and faith simply intermingle each with the other. Even the title tells you that this is an Irish book to its very core: Troy consciously quotes from “I See His Blood Upon the Rose” by Joseph Mary Plunkett, kinsman of St Oliver and executed in 1916 for his part in the Easter Rising.
<em>I see His blood upon the rose </em><br><em>And in the stars the glory of His eyes, </em><br><em>His body gleams amid eternal snows, </em><br><em>His tears fall from the skies.</em>
As for Plunkett, all of Troy’s adventures – for all the funniness that he brings to them – are infused with a sense that there is no place on earth where God’s glory may not be seen. Thus he brings order out of chaos: small frustrations pale into insignificance when the destination is reached. “We have walked in the footsteps of saints and treaded the ground that once ran with the blood of the martyrs,” he writes. “We have brushed our hands against the very stones touched by Jesus, the only-begotten Son of the Father.”
Troy is unaffectedly frank about his reliance on Mary’s prayers; he invokes her under the title of “Our Lady of the Skies”, which itself makes a neat Irish-diaspora connection with the chapel at JFK airport in New York and transatlantic pilgrims from the US east coast. However, for him, the task amounts to far more than meeting people at the airport, showing them the sights and pocketing the fees afterwards. From these memoirs, written after 25 years in harness, it’s clear that it’s not just his job, it’s also his vocation.
<em>Eleanor Hammond lives and works in Rome</em>
