Fr Paul Gooley reads from the Gospel of John (2: 13-22) in which Jesus drives the money changers out of the temple saying, ‘take all of this out of here and stop turning my Father’s house into a market’. After reading the Gospel Fr Paul shares a little about the Dedication of the Lateran Basilica, the feast of which we celebrate today.

Today we celebrate a place, a building.

Today we celebrate the dedication of the Lateran Basilica in Rome. A building in Rome. The Lateran Basilica was built by the Emperor Constantine on the Lateran Hill in Rome in about 324. The feast of its dedication has been celebrated in Rome on this date since the twelfth century.

In honour of the basilica, “the mother and head of all the churches of the City and the World,” the feast has been extended to the whole Roman Rite as a sign of unity and love towards the See of Peter, which, as St Ignatius of Antioch said in the second century, “presides over the whole assembly of charity.”