PRESENTATION OF EXHIBITION ON STS. PETER AND PAUL

VATICAN CITY, MAY 26, 2000 (VIS) - In the Holy See Press Office at midday today, the exhibition "Peter and Paul, History, Worship, Memory in the First Centuries" was presented. The exhibition may be visited in Rome's chancellory building from June 30 to December 10.

Archbishop Crescenzio Sepe, secretary general of the Central Committee for the Great Jubilee, indicated that the exhibition has been organized by the "Meeting for Friendship Among Peoples" association of Rimini, Italy, in close collaboration with the Pontifical Monuments, Museums and Galleries. He added that it has been promoted by the Pontifical Council for the Laity for the occasion of World Youth Day, which will be held in August at Tor Vergata on the outskirts of Rome.

Archbishop Sepe said "Peter and Paul: this is the very heart of the significance and justification of the pilgrimage to Rome, the key element of the whole Jubilee, this is what the exhibition proposes and the goal at which it is aimed."

Bishop Stanislaw Rylko, secretary of the Pontifical Council for the Laity, said that the exhibition "lies in the context of the series of exhibitions on Christian art, on archeology and on Church history, promoted by our dicastery over the last few years on the occasion of World Youth Days." Furthermore, he added, "the common denominator in these exhibitions is the figure of Peter and his ministry in the Church. These two elements always shine forth in all their splendor whenever young people gather around the Pope."

For his part, Fabrizio Bisconti, secretary of the Pontifical Commission of Sacred Archeology, affirmed that the two apostles, Peter and Paul, are considered "in the dynamics of their evangelization, in their thought, in their arrival in Rome, in their death and in the unstoppable and unsuppressible worship that extended from their tombs over the entire city and from there over the whole 'Orbis Christianus Antiquus'."

Referring to the contents of the exhibition, Bisconti indicated that the first section contains lamps, plaques, stained glass and sarcophagi from the Jewish catacombs in Rome, while the second section houses a number of historic sarcophagi. The following two sections "develop, respectively, the themes of the history and iconography of the Princes of the Apostles, also giving consideration to episodes handed down in the apocryphal gospels, such as the miracle of the fountain and the arrest of Peter." The final section deals with the theme of worship "and contains material found near the tomb of Peter, portraits of the apostle and of Pope Siricius from the Leonine Basilica of St. Paul's Outside-the-Walls, and carved and mosaic inscriptions that recall the cult of the two martyrs par excellence."

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