The new Italian Lectionary

Since December 2, the first Sunday of Advent, a new liturgical Lectionary has been in use in Italy, with a new translation of the Old and New Testaments approved by the Holy See, intended to be more faithful to the original biblical text and at the same time more comprehensible to the man of today.

But the novelty of the Lectionary is not only in the translation.

Even more than this, it is in the images that accompany the texts.

Eighty-seven full-page images in the three volumes that make up the new Lectionary for Sundays and feast days, one for each annual cycle. All the images were painted by living Italian artists, like Angelo Casciello, the artist who illustrated the healing of the man born blind (above).

Sandro Magister reports fully on the new Lectionary and the philosophy behind the imagery and the varied reactions to the Lectionary.

Unfortunately the Lectionary has been plagued by mis-translations and typographical errors. Recourse has been had to separate self-sticking errata slips because of the number of errors.