Word: vatican
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Father Guido Sarducci, the fictional rock critic and gossip columnist for the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano, the trip to Rome should have been something of a pilgrimage. But for Actor Don Novello, 38, who created Sarducci and often played him on TV's Saturday Night Live, the visit was less than heavenly. Decked out in priestly threads for a photo story for Attenzione, a magazine for Italian Americans published in New York City, Novello ventured past the Vatican walls for a shot outside L 'Osservatore 's offices. Swiss Guards soon collared the comic cleric...
...parchment petition, headed Sanctissimo in Christo and bemedaled with ribbons and the 75 red wax seals of the petitioners, looks as imposing as it did on the day in 1530 when it arrived on Pope Clement's desk. It was long filed away in the Vatican, but 100 years ago, the church opened its ancient archives to selected scholars. This year, to commemorate that date, the Vatican has put 236 of its choicest treasures on public display. Many of the documents are as notable for their exquisite calligraphy and design as for their historic significance. Until...
...miscellany of letters from Napoleon, Copernicus, Erasmus, Rossini, Queen Christina of Sweden and Mary Queen of Scots. Not included is the legendary erotica collection widely rumored to be hidden somewhere in the Vatican Archives...
...oldest specimen in the current Vatican exhibit is a Liber Diurnus Romanorum Pontificum that dates from the late 8th century and establishes regulations, worthy of the Pentagon, for the preparation and maintenance of ecclesiastical documents. But the exact origin of the Vatican Archives is unknown. As early as 303 Emperor Diocletian decreed that everything accumulated until that time be destroyed. In 410 the Visigoths stormed Rome, and the city burned for three days. The Vandals sacked it in 455, the Saracens...
Today the archives are in the Apostolic Library, in the same building as the Vatican Museum. By 1950 the library extended onward and outward to include some 30 miles of shelf space. These shelves are crammed with thousands of bound volumes and huge leather boxes, most of them 3 ft. high and up to 10 in. thick. Each box contains scores, even hundreds of documents...