On July 1, 1997, six and a half million FREE people of Hong Kong were sold into slavery. The butchers of Tiananmen have turned China into a vast concentration camp, where public celebration of the Roman Catholic Mass is a criminal offense, punishable by many years of prison.
Thousands of Chinese are sentenced to death and executed every year, after the forcible removal of their vital organs, which are sold for hard currency in the lucrative human organs market.
There are over 250,000 Catholics in Hong Kong; the Catholic religious orders run the school system there. Pray for the martyred Christians of China, for the Christians of Hong Kong and for their deliverance from Communist slavery! --- Michael Olteanu, M.S.
Scores of artifacts were added throughout the next two centuries and the collections were eventually reorganized under Benedict XIV (1740-1758) and Clement XIII (1758-1769). They founded the Apostolic Library Museums: the Sacred (Museo Sacro - 1756) and the Profane (Museo Profano - 1767).
The Christian Museum, comprising finds from the catacombs that could not be conserved in situ, was founded by Pius IX in 1854 in the Lateran Palace and was moved to the Vatican Museums by Pope John XXIII.
Pope Pius XI inaugurated in 1932 the definitive seat of the Vatican Picture Gallery (the Pinacoteca), near the monumental entrance of the Vatican Museums.