The museum brochure calls it “a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition.”

I know hyperbole when I hear it, but St. Peter and the Vatican: the Legacy of the Popes rises high above the slick pitch used to sell it.

I visited the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see this largest Vatican collection ever to tour North America, and when I walked out nearly three hours later, I felt like I'd marched through 2,000 years of Catholic history.

The exhibit has since completed its Texas leg, but you can catch up with it at the Museum of Art in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., now through Nov. 23. From there it will move on to the Cincinnati Museum Center in Ohio (Dec. 20-April 18, 2004), then the Museum of Art in San Diego (May 16-Sept. 6, 2004).

As the exhibit's name indicates, the focus here is on St. Peter and his successor vicars of Christ through the centuries. The organizers have selected items from the papal sacristy along with the collections and archives of other Vatican institutions.

That this is no low-budget effort is evident with one look at the show's print companion—a glossy, full-color volume clocking in at more than 500 pages and selling for $49.95. Nor should the professional sheen be a surprise: The exhibit is a venture of entertainment conglomerate Clear Channel Worldwide. Stacy King, chief executive of Clear Channel's exhibits division, told the Cincinnati Enquirer that such “blockbusters” can cost from $2 million to $10 million to produce and acknowledged that because of its irreplaceable objects “this is certainly more costly than anything I've ever toured.”

The collaboration has its critics. According to a Boston Globe report last year, filed when Massachusetts was a possible venue, Clear Channel promised corporate partners willing to pay $10 million apiece “inclusion in a multi-million-dollar multi-market broadcast, outdoor and print advertising campaign.” With the aggressive media corporation fighting various antitrust allegations at the time, the Globe called the Vatican-Clear Channel alliance “unholy.”

The Cincinnati Enquirer's estimation that the commercial power-house could attract as many as 500,000 people to the Ohio venue alone may help explain why the Vatican couldn't pass up this golden opportunity to put public relations in the service of evangelization.

That objective is plain from the reading of Pope John Paul II's welcome: “May all who visit the exhibition … in admiring the beauty of the works of art contained therein, draw near with confidence to Jesus Christ the redeemer, who made the Apostle Peter his vicar on earth.”

As if to elaborate on this statement, the entry room is closed off and an introductory film clip picks up the action. “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church,” Jesus proclaims to the head of the apostles. This defining moment from Matthew 16:18, and Peter's reception of the keys to the kingdom, is echoed in painting and sculpture.

After activating the headset provided, you go at your own pace to learn about Peter's preaching, his run-ins with Paul, his death by crucifixion and hasty burial in the year 67. Coming out of a representation of Peter's tomb, you open onto a world that will never be the same. Timelines strategically placed throughout the exhibit move you toward the present, paralleling Church and secular events.

Michelangelo, Bernini, Giotto, Cellini, Canova and other artists are represented. There's even a handwritten invoice from Carlo Maderno for painting and gilding work. The Church as art patron and architectural reincarnations of the ancient and Renaissance basilicas get much attention.

One intriguing display shows how the 330-ton obelisk that stood in Nero's circus and “witnessed” St. Peter's death was transported to Vatican square in 1586—a feat that required 907 men, 75 horses, 40 winches and the destruction of all buildings in its path. How it was then raised upright and placed on its pedestal is illustrated in miniature.

As you continue, you find yourself ogling more than 350 priceless treasures. Portraits of popes in chronological order evolve from idealized images to naturalistic reproductions, the latter so alive you want to “feel” the red velvet copes. Vestments, miters, rings and even slippers are matched to former owners. Bejeweled chalices, gold-encrusted monstrances, ciboriums and patens are explained: Yes, visitors are told, these precious objects once touched the very Body and Blood of Jesus Christ.

The earliest objects date to the third century; the most recent are from our own time.

To me, the most affecting piece in the exhibit was the Mandylion of Edessa, the artifact that drew me to the exhibit. Was this tempera-on-linen image, thought to be the earliest representation of the face of Christ, actually modeled from the Shroud of Turin? Some claim this is so. Why, I wondered, was this humble but undeniably great treasure tucked off in an obscure corner?

The exhibit races through centuries as its missionary efforts take root and the modern papacy emerges after the outbreak of the French Revolution in 1789. A restored tiara Napoleon's soldiers once stripped of its gems and made unwearable to mock Pius VII symbolizes the despot's attempt to bury the Church.

Of course, neither he nor Nazism, communism—nor even the costly failings of some terribly flawed popes—would prevail over the Church Christ had promised to preserve.

This outstanding exhibit drives home that reality in a vivid and powerful way.

Sometimes even a profit-driven production can provide an opportunity for pilgrimage.

Joanne C. Schmidt writes from Houston.