Vatican Exhibit Breaks Attendance Record

THE CINCINNATI POST, April 12 — A Vatican exhibit has broken the attendance record for a temporary exhibit at the Cincinnati Museum Center.

More than 163,000 people have bought tickets for the “St. Peter and the Vatican: The Legacy of Popes” exhibit, according to attendance figures compiled through April 7. The exhibit opened Dec. 20 and was scheduled to run through April 18.

The exhibit features more than 350 objects spanning 2,000 years of papal history, the newspaper reported. Many of the objects have never been outside the Vatican or displayed for the public.

“Titanic: The Artifact Exhibit” held the previous record with an attendance of 161,000. The president of the Northern Kentucky Convention and Visitors Bureau attributed a boost in leisure travelers in recent months to the exhibit.

Canadian Broadcasting Co. Releases Pope DVD

DAILY MINER & NEWS (Ontario), April 8 — A three-hour-long DVD documentary by the Canadian Broadcasting Co. on the life of Pope John Paul II was released April 6.

Distributed by ImaVision, Life and Times of Pope John Paul II is divided into three parts: the Pope's life, his role in the fall of communism in 1989 and coverage of his election to the Chair of Peter after the death of Pope John Paul I in 1978, according to a review in the newspaper.

“Pope John Paul II is a Pope who has been seen by more human beings than any other man in history and this is very evident in the video,” the reviewer writes.

The film features stories of the Holy Father's childhood, such as his relationship with Jerzy Kluger, a Jewish next-door neighbor and young Karol Wojtyla's best friend.

The documentary also openly presents John Paul's views on the Church teaching on sexuality, divorce, contraception and homosexuality.

“The question the viewer is left with,” the reviewer concludes, “is: ‘How will we remember the legacies of this great, spiritual world leader as seen by Catholics and non-Catholics alike?’”

Passion Bootlegs Sell Out in Holy Land

KNIGHT-RIDDER, April 11 — While Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ has been a box-office sensation around the world, no distributor has picked it up for release in the Holy Land, spawning the sale of bootlegs of the film.

Bootleg DVDs and videotapes are selling all over the Holy Land, from the Gaza Strip to the West Bank to Israel — where the Aramaic dialogue in the film comes with Hebrew subtitles, the news service reported.

Yasser Arafat even viewed the film at a private screening, after which he called it “historic and impressive.” A hotel in mostly Arab East Jerusalem even held invitation-only, $5 per person screenings for about 200 people. Proceeds were donated to Christian charities for the elderly and orphans.

Black marketers say demand for the film is high, the news service reported, particularly in the Palestinian territories, where 99% of the population is Muslim and people are more likely to think ill of Jews.

While many Jewish leaders have condemned the film as anti-Semitic, other Jewish people as well as those of other religions have said it is not.