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The Vatican this week unveiled a series of catacombs used by early Christians in Rome after a major restoration.
The Priscilla catacombs where Christians worshipped and buried their own are re-opening to the public after five years of work in which restorers used lasers to clean up the religious frescoes on the walls.
The Vatican’s culture minister, Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, said the catacombs “were a living and breathing symbol of the first Christians, of their daily lives.”
Proponents of a female priesthood are saying that frescoes in the newly restored Catacombs of Priscilla prove there were women priests in early Christianity.
The Vatican said such assertions are sensationalist “fairy tales”.
In a room called the “Cubiculum of the Veiled Woman,” shows a woman whose arms are outstretched like those of a priest saying Mass. She wears what the catacombs’ Italian website calls “a rich liturgical garment”. The word “liturgical” does not appear in the English version.
She also wears what appears to be a stole, a vestment worn by priests. Another fresco, in a room known as “The Greek Chapel,” shows a group of women sitting around a table, their arms outstretched like those of priests celebrating Mass.
Organizations promoting a female priesthood, such as the Women’s Ordination Conference and the Association of Roman Catholic Woman Priests, have pointed to these ancient scenes as evidence of a female priesthood in the early Church.
But the Vatican contests these interpretations.
“This is an elaboration that has no foundation in reality,” Barbara Mazzei of the Pontifical Commission on Sacred Archaeology told Reuters at the presentation of the restoration on Tuesday.
“This is a fairy tale, a legend,” said Professor Fabrizio Bisconti, superintendent of religious heritage archaeological sites owned by the Vatican, including numerous catacombs scattered around Rome.
He said such interpretations were “sensationalist and absolutely not reliable”.
Sources
Reuters
The Daily Mail
The Local
Image: Reuters
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