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The 2014 wish book includes cleaning an 18th century silk embroidered Manchurian dress (10,000 euros/$13,800); sponsoring an outside archaeologist to work on the necropolis dig underneath the Vatican's parking lot (40,000 euros) and buying new display cases for the Egyptian Museum (930,000 euros). During the anniversary week in Rome, patrons were treated to demonstrations by laboratory restorers about their craft, dinners in Museum galleries and a rare question-and-answer session with a top official in the Secretariat of State about the Vatican's reform and relations with the media. Basic membership, though, has its priceless privileges: Patrons can jump the line at the Vatican Museums and go straight to the Sistine Chapel before anyone gets in in the morning. They can get private tours of off-limit galleries and restoration labs, special access to St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican gardens. They get priority seating at the pope's weekly general audience and have an "in" to score coveted tickets to Midnight Mass. Patrons aren't necessarily Catholic, but they tend to be art buffs eager for behind-the-scenes access that membership provides. "We saw an ad in a travel magazine about the benefits of being a patron," said Esther Milsted, an attorney from Hoboken, New Jersey. She and her husband Mark Villamar wanted to see the Pauline Chapel inside the Apostolic Palace, which is not normally open to the public. They got in after joining and have since taken advantage of membership to visit restoration labs and participate in the anniversary festivities. "It's a good deal -- and tax-deductible," Villamar said. ___ Patrons are at
http://www.vatican-patrons.org/
[Associated
Press;
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