The Deacon

Teresa Tomeo still remembers her first trip to Italy with her husband, Deacon Dominick Pastore.

“We had some downtime and decided to wander in Rome,” she told The Deacon about a parish pilgrimage they joined in the summer of 2001. “We just felt so at home and could not stop marveling at the beauty all around us.” Tomeo and Deacon Pastore are what she calls “FBIs,” or full-blooded Italian Americans. As the couple walked through the city streets, they noticed the similarities between the locals and their Italian grandparents. “That was the start,” Tomeo said, “of our love affair with Italy.”

Since that trip, Tomeo, a syndicated Catholic talk-show host, author and motivational speaker, has visited Italy more than 60 times and now lives there parttime. In 2019, she started her own Italy consultation company, T’s Italy, and she regularly leads tours there through her travel partner, Corporate Travel Service. Tomeo brings this experience and more to her latest book, “Italy’s Shrines and Wonders: Discovering Sacred Spaces, Fascinating Places, and Destinations off the Beaten Path,” released by EWTN Publishing in February, just in time for Jubilee 2025.

But the book is more than a guide to Italy. Like the country it presents, it is a guide to the Faith.

Beyond Tourism

The cover of the nearly 400-page book entices readers with a photo of the Shrine of Madonna della Corona, an Italian church that seemingly clings midair to a sheer, rocky cliff. The pages inside likewise burst with colorful photography.

Tomeo explores Italy in a comprehensive way, delving into its rich history, culture and faith tradition. In each chapter, she provides the highlights, sacred spaces and fascinating places of Italy’s 20 regions, as well as insider travel tips, her “mustsees and -dos,” descriptions of cultural celebrations and stories of the saints.

Along the way, she weaves in plenty of stories and even recipes. Some of the stories are her own, while some are from fellow travelers who converted or reverted to Catholicism after life-changing encounters with God in Italy.

Those stories point to the most important reason she and her husband continue to return to Italy — what she calls “the faith factor.” Tomeo, at one point in her book, tells readers about her own faith and return to the Catholic Church after drifting away as an adult.

“Italy, being home to the Vatican, and ground zero for important religious art and pilgrimage sites, has had and continues to have a profound impact on our faith,” she told The Deacon.

“There are so many saints from Italy, especially in the region of Umbria, where we reside six months out of the year. We have come to know them so much better by visiting their tombs and praying in the places where they lived and shared the Gospel.”

A Country for Deacons

Tomeo has been the wife of a deacon since 2012, when her husband was ordained for the Archdiocese of Detroit. When they aren’t in Italy, the couple, who have been married for more than 41 years, live in the Detroit area.

Deacons and deacon couples should visit Italy “once, twice, three times or more,” Tomeo said, as it offers “so much to see related to our faith, the history of the Church and the diaconate.” S

everal locations included in her book hold special significance for deacons.

“St. Francis was a deacon, so Assisi is an extremely important town to visit, along with the many other locations in Umbria and around Italy he visited — such as La Verna in Tuscany, where he received the stigmata, or Greccio in Lazio, where he established the first live Nativity,” Tomeo recommended.

She also named Spoleto, where a letter St. Francis wrote to his friend Brother Leo is kept in a reliquary, and Gubbio, where St. Francis is famously said to have tamed a wolf that was terrorizing the city. A church there is dedicated to the story.

Tomeo additionally recommended traveling the Way of St. Francis, which begins in La Verna and ends in Rome.

Deacons should also consider locations connected to St. Lawrence, such as the mosaics depicting him in Ravenna and the papal Basilica of St. Lawrence Outside the Walls in Rome, where the deacon martyr is interred. It was Father John Riccardo, founder of Acts XXIX Ministry — and who wrote the forward to Tomeo’s book — who first recommended that Tomeo and her husband visit St. Lawrence Outside the Walls, which also contains relics of the deacon and the martyr St. Stephen.

For married deacons and their wives, Tomeo pointed to Cascia, home of St. Rita, a patroness of difficult marriages and parenthood; and the Sanctuary della Madonna del Bagni near Deruta, a Marian shrine that involves a love story.

A Place to Recharge

A trip to Italy promises to have an impact on the faith of deacons and deacon couples, Tomeo said, especially by fostering a more intimate relationship with the saints connected to that country.

“For me and Deacon Dom, Italy continues to ground us in our Catholic faith and our mission as a deacon couple,” she said. “I cannot say enough about spending time with the saints, especially those associated with the diaconate.”

“Any and all of the saints have been through struggles in and outside the Church,” she added. “They teach us that regardless of what happens, the Church will still be there, because Our Lord said so.”

Italy helped Tomeo and her husband recognize the permanence of the Church, she said. “We come to realize by visiting such important religious sites, including the tombs of saints and the many Marian shrines — such as Loreto, home of Mary’s house, or St. Mary Major in Rome, which is home to the famous Salus Populi Romani (Protectress of Rome and Her People) — that this is not the Catholic Church’s first rodeo, so to speak,” she said. “The Church will continue to stand, and we will be strengthened by spending time with Holy Mother Church in bella Italia.”

Italy, according to Tomeo, “has something for everyone, especially those committed to their faith.”

“I don’t think there are too many people who would disagree that Italy, regardless of whether one is Catholic or Italian, is one of the most incredibly beautiful places on the Lord’s green earth,” she said. “It just oozes God everywhere. Or, as I like to say, it’s God showing off his brilliance and creativity.”

Katie Yoder is a contributing editor for Our Sunday Visitor.