In recent decades, there has been much insistence, and rightly so, on the idea of the universal Church. I have no problem with that idea; indeed, I find it profoundly Catholic. It is a sign of the Church’s universalistic vocation whereby, despite cultural differences, I might find myself more in tune with a Chinese or African cardinal than with one from my own country.
Hence, we must not make the mistake of thinking that emphasising the greatness of the Roman School means denying such universalism. The Church is universal precisely because she is Roman; Romanità, Romanness, is the driving force that disseminates the Church in the world. As I said previously, Rome must not be considered exclusively as a physical place, circumscribed by geographical boundaries; instead, it should be seen rather as a place of the spirit, a place where, by the action of divine providence, the sacred manifested itself and an earthly empire was later sublimated into a spiritual empire.
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