Sticky strips to correct errors

VATICAN CITY -- When the Italian bishops announced the Vatican-approved publication of a new translation of scripture readings for use at Mass, they said they had made more than 100,000 changes to the text. But, it turns out, some of the changes were not intentional.

The three volumes of readings for Sundays went on sale in late November and, by early December, the bishops had ordered thousands of copies of self-adhesive strips to paste over a dozen errors.

The most obvious mistake was the New Testament heading, "The First Letter of St. Paul to the Romans." There is no second letter to the Romans, so the word "first" is never used.

Fr. Mimmo Falco, director of the Italian bishops' national liturgy office, said the other errors mainly involve punctuation. He rejected calls for the volumes to be recalled and reprinted as wasteful.

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