Pope receives old Gospels

VATICAN CITY -- A donation to the Vatican by a U.S. businessman enabled Pope Benedict XVI to study a few pages of the oldest existing copy of the Gospel of St. Luke and one of the oldest copies of the Gospel of St. John.

Atlanta-based Catholic businessman, Frank J. Hanna III, and his family were present in the pope's library Jan. 22 when Pope Benedict got his first look at pages from the famous Bodmer Papyrus XIV-XV. The manuscript contains about half of each of the Gospels of Luke and John, handwritten in Greek around the year 200.

The new acquisition includes the oldest existing copy of the Lord's Prayer, which is found in Luke 11:1-4. The manuscript joins the Bodmer Papyrus VIII, a copy of the First and Second Letters of St. Peter, which were given to Pope Paul VI in 1969.

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