Faith Digest: Vatican to display St. Peter’s relics

Vatican to display bones of Apostle Peter. The Vatican announced it will display for the first time bones believed to be the mortal remains of the Apostle Peter to mark the end of the Year of Faith, Nov. 24. Many Christians believe Peter was crucified upside down and died in either A.D. 64 or 67 on the spot now marked by the Clementine Chapel inside the basilica that bears his name. The Roman Catholic Church never officially declared the bones—discovered in the 1940s—authentic. But a series of exhaustive tests conducted on them between their discovery and 1968 convinced Pope Paul VI they had been “identified in a way we can hold to be convincing.” Previously, only the box containing the bones was on display. Pope Benedict XVI declared the Year of Faith last year to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the opening of the Second Vatican Council.

Westminster Abbey marks Kristallnacht anniversary. About 1,600 British Christians and Jews Kristallnacht attacks targeted German Jews in 1938. (Image: Wikipedia)filled Westminster Abbey for an interfaith worship service that marked the 75th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Also known as the Night of Broken Glass, Kristallnacht was a series of coordinated attacks carried out by Nazi paramilitaries and civilians against Jews throughout Hitler’s Germany and parts of Austria between Nov. 9 and 10, 1938. More than 90 German Jews were killed and 30,000 more sent to concentration camps. During the hour-long service, a candelabra from the Belsize Square Synagogue in central London was processed through the abbey where England’s kings and queens are buried. Choirs from the 10th-century abbey and West London Synagogue sang, and Ann Kirk, a survivor of Kristallnacht, lighted six memorial candles. Julia Neuberger, the senior rabbi of the West London Synagogue, delivered the address.