On Sunday, October 13, a restored historic epigraph containing one of the oldest mentions of the name of Christ will be unveiled in catacombs in Italy.
In a statement published this Friday, the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archeology reported that that day, at 11:00 (local time) “in the Catacombs of To the tenth In Grottaferrata a ceremony will be held for the restitution of an important funerary epigraph in the Greek language, which contains one of the oldest mentions of the name of Christ”.
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The Catacombs to the tenthpoints out the website of catacombs in Italy, “dates from the end of the 3rd century and was in operation until the first decades of the 5th; It is quite large and particularly important for the almost intact state of conservation of some of its sectors, as well as for the numerous frescoes and funerary inscriptions that are preserved there.”
The text indicates that the epigraph or inscription, which will be unveiled on Sunday, was “stolen in the 80’s from the Catacombs To the tenth from Grottaferrata (via Anagnina 4) and recovered in November 2023 by the Carabinieri of the Cultural Heritage Protection Command in close collaboration with the police forces of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.”
“The epigraphic discovery, stolen from the catacombs, was kept in the National Museum of Saint Catherine of Utrecht, which has actively collaborated in the restitution of the inscription, donated to the museum by a private collector,” the statement states.
The event includes brief speeches by the authorities present, the unveiling of the recovered inscription, restored for the occasion and relocated to the catacombs, and will conclude with a visit to the underground complex.
Present at the ceremony will be Bishop Pasquale Iacobone, President of the Pontifical Commission for Sacred Archaeology, Annemieke Ruigrok, Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the Holy See, Paolo Befera, Commander of the Carabinieri Operational Department for the Protection of Cultural Heritage , Peter Veltman, from the National Police of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, and Professor Mirko Di Bernardo, Mayor of Grottaferrata, a city located one hour from Rome.
Walter Sánchez Silva
I have been a husband since 2008. My wife and I have three children here and one who went to heaven in 2023, before he was born. Since I joined ACI Prensa in 2005, I have had the opportunity to cover various events of the Catholic Church. Among them, the World Youth Days in Cologne, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro and the apostolic trips of Pope Benedict XVI to Mexico and of Pope Francis to South Korea. I have been sent to the Vatican to cover the Family synods, in 2015; of the Amazon, in 2019 and that of Synodality, in 2023. I closely follow the situation of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua, which suffers persecution from the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega, as well as current ecclesiastical events in the region.