Tuesday, January 20, 2009

POPE TO VISIT ROME TOWN HALL ON 9 MARCH

VATICAN CITY, 20 JAN 2009 (VIS) - Accepting an invitation from the mayor and local council of Rome, the Holy Father will visit the town hall of that city on Monday 9 March, where he will participate in an extraordinary session of the council dedicated to the theme of "the universal value of Rome, capital of Catholicism and of its values".
OP/VISIT LOCAL AUTHORITIES/ROME            VIS 20090120 (80)

CATALOGUE OF HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS IN THE VATICAN LIBRARY


VATICAN CITY, 20 JAN 2009 (VIS) - A communique made public today announces that at 10 a.m. on 30 January in the conference hall at Via dell'Ospedale 1, Rome, a presentation will take place of a newly-published book entitled "Hebrew Manuscripts in the Vatican Library: Catalogue".

  Among those participating in the event will be Cardinal Raffaele Farina S.D.B., archivist and librarian of Holy Roman Church; Mordechay Lewy, ambassador of Israel to the Holy See; Msgr. Cesare Pasini, prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, and Benjamin Richler, former director of the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts of the Jewish National and University Library.

  According to the communique the book, published by the Vatican Library, represents a significant example of co-operation between the cultural institutions of the Holy See and of Israel. It is a catalogue of all Vatican manuscripts in Hebrew script - a total of around 800 items distributed over eleven collections - edited by the technical staff of the National Library of Israel whose job it is to conserve and study microfilmed Hebrew manuscripts located in various parts of the world.

  The new volume is of particular importance because it comes more than fifty years after the inventory prepared by Umberto Cassuto (Moshe David Cassuto 1883-1951), and is the first catalogue to appear since the "Catalogus" published in the eighteenth-century by Giuseppe Simonio Assemani, "First Custodian" of the Vatican Library.
.../HEBREW MANUSCRIPTS/VATICAN LIBRARY        VIS 20090120 (250)