Vatican unveils restored catacomb with frescoes showing 'female priests'
Edited to add a link: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/20/vatican-unveils-frescoes-restored-female-priests-catacomb
Vatican unveils restored catacomb with frescoes showing 'female priests'
Women depicted in scenes show they were priests, say activists; they were just praying like everyone else, says Holy See
Associated Press in Vatican City
theguardian.com, Wednesday 20 November 2013 12.43 EST
The Vatican has unveiled newly restored frescoes in the catacombs of Priscilla, known for housing the earliest known image of the Madonna and child, and frescoes said by some to show women priests in the early Christian church...
...More controversially, the catacombs feature two scenes said by proponents of the women's ordination movement to show female priests: one in the ochre Greek chapel features a group of women celebrating a banquet, said to be the banquet of the eucharist. Another fresco in a richly decorated burial chamber features a woman, dressed in a dalmatic – a cassock-like robe – with her hands up in the position used by priests for public worship.
The Association of Roman Catholic Women Priests, which includes women who have been excommunicated by the Vatican for participating in purported ordination ceremonies, holds the images up as evidence that there were female priests in the early Christian church.
But Fabrizio Bisconti, the superintendent of the Vatican's sacred archaeology commission, said such a reading of the frescoes was pure "fable, a legend"....
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