Pauline Year-end exhibition at Vatican Museum

(June 26, 2009) As the year-long celebration of the Pauline year is nearing its end, a special exhibition entitled “St Paul in the Vatican” was inaugurated on Thursday in the Vatican museums. A special inauguration ceremony was held for the exhibition that is open till September 27. Some 130 works are up for public viewing, among them 40 very rare volumes. Besides, there are 25 precious archaeological specimens on public display for the first time, such as a sarcophagus (stone funeral box) of Timothy the martyr recovered from the tomb of St. Paul along with a treasury of 160 coins. Five such sarcophagi from the early Christian period, three of them just recently restored, are on exhibition for the first time. The Pauline Year, commemorating the 2000^th birth anniversary of St. Paul the Apostle, will formally conclude on Sunday, the eve of the feast of St. Peter and Paul. Pope Benedict XVI will preside over a special Vespers service in Rome’s St. Paul’s Basilica Outside the Walls, where the remains of the saint, who was beheaded in Rome, are believed to be buried. Similar closing ceremonies are scheduled for Sunday at various locations around the Mediterranean linked with the life and journeys of St. Paul.