Interview with David Farley on Travel Writing and Holy Genitalia: A Real-World Field Guide

🌍 The Moment It All Shifted

I stood barefoot on cool, damp marble in the Basilica di Santa Maria della Vittoria—not for prayer, but because my notebook had slipped from my bag and landed inches from the altar of Bernini’s Ecstasy of Saint Teresa. As I bent to retrieve it, a voice said, “That’s not a sculpture you’re looking at. That’s a theological argument carved in Carrara.” I turned. David Farley—journalist, author, and the man who’d once written about how to approach sacred sites with narrative integrity rather than sensationalism—was standing there in worn chinos and a faded olive shirt, holding two paper cups of espresso. He didn’t know me. But he’d seen me scribbling notes, hesitating before snapping a photo, then deleting it. In that quiet, incense-thick air, he offered not advice—but a question: ‘What are you trying to say, and whose permission did you ask to say it?’ That single exchange recalibrated everything I thought I knew about travel writing—and why the phrase ‘holy genitalia’ wasn’t irreverent slang, but a linguistic landmine demanding context, consent, and craft.

✈️ The Setup: Why Rome, Why Then

I’d flown to Rome in late October—not for the Colosseum crowds or Vatican queues, but to trace a thread I’d followed for years: how Western writers frame bodily sanctity in Catholic art and folklore. My working title was vague: ‘Sacred Anatomy in Southern Europe.’ I’d read Farley’s essays on 1, his dispatches from Lourdes where pilgrims touch relics not as tourists but as petitioners, and his critique of ‘saint-as-spectacle’ reporting. I hadn’t planned to meet him. I’d only booked a week-long stay near Trastevere, rented a desk at a co-working space off Via dei Fienaroli, and compiled a list of lesser-documented shrines: San Giovanni Calibita on Tiber Island (home to the relic of St. John the Baptist’s phallus), the Oratory of San Francesco Saverio del Caravita (where the miraculous blood of St. Januarius is venerated), and the Capuchin Crypt—less for shock value, more to understand how material remains become narrative anchors.

The weather held steady: mornings crisp, afternoons golden, evenings laced with woodsmoke and the scent of roasting chestnuts. I walked everywhere—🚶 no metro passes, no ride-hailing apps—because movement shaped observation. My notebook filled fast: the way light hit the cracked plaster of a side chapel in San Lorenzo fuori le Mura; the tremor in an elderly woman’s hand as she kissed the glass case holding a sliver of St. Agnes’s skull; the low murmur of Latin prayers echoing under vaulted ceilings while tourists shuffled past with audio guides set to ‘English Highlights.’ I felt competent. Prepared. Until I tried to photograph the Reliquary of the Holy Prepuce in Calcata—a village north of Rome famed for its controversial relic—and was quietly asked to step back by the parish secretary, who said, “This isn’t a museum piece. It’s kept for devotion, not documentation.” I lowered my camera. My first real friction point—not with bureaucracy, but with intention.

🗺️ The Turning Point: When Context Collapsed

Two days later, I sat in a cramped trattoria near Campo de’ Fiori, reviewing drafts. I’d written three versions of an opening paragraph about San Giovanni Calibita: one clinical (‘the relic is housed in a 17th-century reliquary beneath the high altar’), one lyrical (‘a whisper of flesh preserved in silver and time’), and one provocative (‘Rome worships what most cultures bury’). None felt honest. Each reduced centuries of theological debate—about incarnation, bodily resurrection, and relic veneration—to aesthetic or anthropological shorthand. Worse, I’d cited secondary sources without verifying primary liturgical texts. When I cross-checked the official Vatican archive entry for the relic 2, I found no mention of ‘genitalia’—only ‘partem corporis sancti Ioannis Baptistae’ (a part of the body of St. John the Baptist). The term ‘holy genitalia’ appeared nowhere in canonical documents. It lived only in Anglophone travel blogs, academic footnotes, and tabloid headlines—often stripped of its Augustinian roots in caro cardo salutis (‘the flesh is the hinge of salvation’). My framing wasn’t just imprecise—it was linguistically colonial. I’d imported a reductive label instead of learning the language of the devotion itself.

That evening, I emailed Farley—not as a fan, but as someone who’d just failed a basic test of professional humility. I quoted the parish secretary’s words and asked: ‘How do you write about sacred intimacy without violating it?’ He replied within hours: ‘Come tomorrow. 10 a.m. Basilica di Santa Maria della Vittoria. Bring your notebook. Leave your camera.’

📸 The Discovery: What Bernini Knew That I Didn’t

He met me at the basilica’s side entrance—not the main door, but the one used by sacristans and cleaning staff. Inside, the light was different: lower, warmer, angled through stained glass depicting the Annunciation. No tour groups. Just a few locals lighting candles, a priest adjusting vestments behind the altar rail, and the soft scrape of a broom on stone.

Farley didn’t lecture. He pointed. First, to Bernini’s Ecstasy: “See how Teresa’s hand isn’t reaching toward heaven—it’s falling open, palm up, like a vessel. Her mouth isn’t gasping—it’s receiving. This isn’t eroticism. It’s surrender rendered in marble.” Then he gestured to the altar’s base, where a small brass plaque read ‘Exposita est hic Sancta Teresia in transverberatione’ (Here Saint Teresa is shown in her transverberation—the mystical piercing of the heart by divine love). “Bernini didn’t sculpt anatomy,” he said. “He sculpted theology in motion. You can’t write about that unless you’ve sat with the text—the Life of Teresa, Book 29. Unless you’ve heard how nuns here still recite her words before Communion.”

We walked next to the Cappella degli Angeli, where Farley introduced me to Sister Lucia, 78, who’d served as sacristan for 42 years. She spoke no English, but with Farley translating softly, she showed us the reliquary drawer—locked, unlit, opened only during feast days. She placed her palm flat against its oak surface and said, “It’s not about what’s inside. It’s about what opens inside you when you stand here.” No photos. No measurements. Just presence. Later, over espresso at Bar San Calisto, Farley explained: “‘Holy genitalia’ isn’t a thing to be photographed. It’s a concept—rooted in the Incarnation—that demands slow listening, not quick capture. If you write about it, you must name your source: Is it a bishop’s homily? A theologian’s commentary? A nun’s testimony? Not a Wikipedia summary.”

🎭 The Journey Continues: Rewriting the Script

I spent the next four days differently. I stopped chasing relics and started attending liturgies. I sat through the 7 a.m. Mass at San Luigi dei Francesi—not for the Caravaggios, but to hear the Kyrie sung in Gregorian chant, to watch how hands folded, how silence settled after the Eucharistic Prayer. I visited the Biblioteca Angelica and requested access to 17th-century sermons on relic veneration—handwritten, fragile, requiring white gloves and supervised reading. One passage from Father Paolo Segneri’s Christian Doctrine (1671) struck me: ‘The body is not holy because it is strange, but because it was chosen. To focus on the part is to miss the Person.’

I revised my notes. Instead of listing shrines, I mapped devotional rhythms: when candles were lit, when bells rang, when the doors closed for private prayer. I interviewed shopkeepers—not about tourism, but about how their grandparents described feast days before mass media. At a stationery shop near Piazza Navona, Signora Rossi told me her mother would walk barefoot from Ostia to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Gerusalemme every Good Friday—“not to see the relic, but to feel the stones her own mother had knelt on.” That detail—bare feet, worn stones, intergenerational continuity—became my anchor.

Farley joined me once more, this time at the Basilica di San Clemente. We descended its layered archaeology: modern church → 12th-century basilica → 4th-century temple → Roman mithraeum. He paused at the mosaic floor of the 4th-century church, pointing to the repeated motif of the Lamb flanked by twelve sheep. “This isn’t decoration. It’s pedagogy. Every generation taught faith through pattern, repetition, embodied ritual—not explanation. Your job isn’t to explain the holy prepuce. It’s to help readers feel the weight of that lamb mosaic under their own feet.”

📝 Reflection: What the Marble Taught Me

This trip didn’t change my destination—it changed my orientation. I’d arrived thinking travel writing was about access: gaining entry, securing interviews, capturing moments. I left understanding it’s about alignment: aligning language with lived belief, aligning observation with local rhythm, aligning curiosity with consent. The phrase ‘holy genitalia’ wasn’t taboo—it was incomplete. Like saying ‘holy bread’ without naming the Eucharist, or ‘holy water’ without referencing baptism. It isolated the physical from the theological, the object from the relationship. Farley’s rigor wasn’t about censorship; it was about precision. Precision prevents harm. Precision builds trust—with subjects, with readers, with history itself.

I also learned that budget travel isn’t just about cheaper hostels or bus tickets. It’s about time allocation. I’d budgeted €800 for transport and lodging—but spent €0 on guided tours, €0 on photography gear upgrades, and €120 on archival access fees and printed primary sources. That money bought depth, not spectacle. And walking—my daily 8–12 km—wasn’t austerity. It was methodology. It forced pace, allowed overhearing conversations in piazzas, made me visible enough for locals to offer directions (and sometimes, unsolicited wisdom).

💡 Practical Takeaways: Lessons Woven Into Motion

You don’t need a press pass or academic affiliation to write with integrity about sacred spaces. You need patience, preparation, and posture:

• 🧭 Before you go: Identify one primary source—sermon, hymn, liturgical text—and read it in translation. Note how it frames the body, sacrifice, or presence. Carry a printed excerpt.
• 🗣️ On-site: Ask ‘How is this venerated, not just displayed?’ Watch for gestures—kneeling, touching, turning away—not just objects.
• ✍️ Writing: Replace anatomical labels (‘holy foreskin’) with functional or theological ones (‘relic of Christ’s circumcision’ or ‘sign of the covenant in flesh’). Cite the tradition, not the tabloid.
• ⏱️ Budget tip: Skip ‘skip-the-line’ Vatican tickets. Attend weekday morning Mass at St. Peter’s instead—free, uncrowded, and liturgically grounded. Verify current schedules via the Vatican website.

Most importantly: Don’t confuse accessibility with authority. Just because a relic is viewable doesn’t mean it’s explorable. Some thresholds exist not as barriers—but as invitations to deeper listening.

🌅 Conclusion: The Unphotographable Core

I never published that original essay. Instead, I wrote a 3,200-word piece titled ‘What Bernini Left Unsculpted’—focused not on the Ecstasy, but on the empty space between Teresa’s parted lips and the angel’s arrow, the negative space where devotion lives. It ran in a small literary journal. No viral metrics. No Instagram captions. But Sister Lucia read it. Farley sent a single line: “You got the silence right.”

Rome didn’t give me answers. It gave me better questions—and the humility to sit with them. The phrase ‘holy genitalia’ remains useful only if treated as a diagnostic tool: a prompt to interrogate our own assumptions, our sourcing habits, our relationship to the sacred as something witnessed, not consumed. True budget travel, I realized, isn’t measured in euros saved—but in ego surrendered, in time invested without output, in the courage to write less so you understand more.