put together a more accurate picture of an unimaginable crime. >> stahl: the "costa condordia" is rusting carcass sitting precariously on two underwater mountain peaks. the swimming pools and jacuzzis where passengers sunbathed and sipped cocktails now empty and askew. and below ghostly vestages of the ship's contents littered the ocean floor in what the italian authorities have designated an official crime scene. 30 people died, two are still missing. so how are they going to raise it? that's our story tonight. are going a place few people have seen firsthand. >> there are about 2 million. >> 2 million printed books. >> vatican library. >> a vast collection of historic treasures beyond compare. >> the library's most valued

documents go back almost 2000 years. >> nearly to the time of st. peter. >> the name of god. >> and from the same period, the gospel of luke and part of the gospel of john. >> at the beginning, it was the word and the word was god. >> >> i'm steve kroft. >> i'm lesley stahl. >> i'm morley safer. >> i'm bob simon. >> i'm lara logan. >> i'm scott pelley. those stories tonight on this shortened edition of "60 minutes." enneed a quick holiday present, go to walgreens.com. just upload your photo, create any number of gifts and pick them up the same day. right here. at the corner of happy and healthy. that retiring some day is even an option for sean and me. how'd you get comfortable enough to know you could really do it? well, planning, of course. and we got a lot of good advice. a few years ago, your mom and i put some money into a pacific life fixed annuity.

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>> pelley: it is a sunday of sorrow for newtown, connecticut,

and for the nation. this afternoon hundreds of residents walked the road to sandy hook elementary school, where, on friday, 26 people were murdered, 20 of them children in the first grade. president obama has been in newtown tonight for a memorial service. first reports of this tragedy have turned out to be inaccurate. we were told that the gunman's mother was a teacher at the school, that he was allowed in because he was recognized, and that he targeted his mother's classroom with two handguns. tonight we know that all of that is wrong. here's what we do know, as told by people who knew the gunman and by one woman at the school that he approached but did not kill. that woman is sally cox, the school nurse. this picture was taken shortly after she left sandy hook elementary on friday. she's been the school nurse there 15 years. and she told us that friday morning began with comforting

routine: 9:10, pledge of allegiance; 9:15, outside doors locked. then came 9:30. >> cox: all of a sudden, i heard a very loud popping noise-- i mean, a noise that i've never, ever heard before. and my first thought was, was this something with the heating something, or did something fall? and i called out to the secretary, "barb, what is that?" and then she called out to me by name. she said, "sally." and i could just hear, like, fear in her voice. >> pelley: it was something about the way barb called out your name? >> cox: yes, yeah. she just had this horrible sound of fear in her voice. that's what made me just... because i think i was about ready to go to see what was going on. the popping kept going off. and i just dove underneath my computer desk. the back of the desk has a small opening for, like, wires to come

out, and i just peeked. i could see his feet and his legs from the knees down, and his feet were facing in my direction. and i just froze with fear. and then he just... it was just seconds, and then he turned around, and i could hear him walk out. i heard the door close, and then i just heard popping starting all over again. and then the secretary, she was down behind my desk, and we pulled the phone off the desk, and she called 911. >> pelley: and she said what? >> cox: she said, "we have a shoo... please send help right away. we have a shooter in the building." and then we just wanted to get out of there, and then we just ran into my big supply closet. and we ran into the closet and we pulled that door closed, so we were behind two locked doors. and we could just hear the

popping continue, and we heard screams. there's nothing we could do, you know? it was just a helpless, horrible feeling, you know? and just like a nightmare that... couldn't believe that... you know, you just think it's a bad dream. after some time-- i think it was about 11:15, so we had been in that closet for about an hour and a half-- i opened the door and i peeked out, because my office has a lot of windows and looks into the courtyard. and i just saw what looked like maybe swat people, but i didn't know, you know, who they were. i didn't know if there were other shooters. and it wasn't until 1:15 when i... somebody was jiggling the door, but nobody called out. so i decided to be brave enough and open that door into the office. a lot of state police officers were there at that point, and they were very surprised to see me.

>> pelley: you were in the closet for about four hours? >> cox: close to it, yeah, yeah. just fearful. >> pelley: i wonder what the standard security at the school is, in terms of allowing visitors into the building and that sort of thing. how is it supposed to work? >> cox: we do our pledge of allegiance at 9:10, and then, five minutes later, the doors are locked, all the doors and all... going around the whole building. and then, when people come, they have to buzz. there's a camera. they push a button. it buzzes in the office, and we buzz them in. >> pelley: how long has that been true? >> cox: four or five years. >> pelley: the gunman had shot out a window to get past the locked door. from the start, sally cox told us, the teachers and the kids went immediately into the lockdown that they had practiced and practiced. children were trained to go under their desks in events like

these? >> cox: yeah, yeah, yeah. and we have different kinds of drills, you know-- i mean, in addition to fire drills and high wind drills and lockdown drills and evacuation drills. so we've done it. we've been doing it, you know? each month it's something different, you know? >> pelley: so you'd done those kind of things fairly recently? >> cox: just recently, yes, yeah. >> pelley: at some point, you left the school, and i wonder, in that journey from your office through the door, what did you see? >> cox: they told me to close my eyes. they got... they took my arm, and they guided me out. they said, "we'll guide you out. we want you to close your eyes until we get to the parking lot." i don't know what was there that they didn't want me to see, but they told me to close my eyes. >> pelley: and that's what you did. >> cox: that's what i did, yeah. >> pelley: the officers spared her the sight of the bodies of

20 first-graders, four teachers, the school psychologist, the principal, and the killer. 20-year-old adam lanza lived in town nearly all his life, but he left few impressions. olivia devivo sat behind lanza in tenth-grade honors english. >> devivo: yeah, he carried a briefcase to every class, and that stood out to me, because in high school, everyone has backpacks and, you know, messenger bags. and that stood out to a lot of kids. >> pelley: it also stood out that lanza was uncomfortable when asked to speak in class. >> devivo: he just would just get very nervous, and, you know, his face would turn bright red, and he would get very fidgety. and you could just tell that it wasn't that he didn't know the answer. it's just that it was very difficult for him to say what he wanted to say. >> pelley: did he have a reputation for being a smart kid? >> devivo: yeah, definitely. i mean, you can just tell by the way he was in class. he always appeared to be very

attentive and focused. >> pelley: how would you describe him socially? >> devivo: he must have really felt uncomfortable in any kind of social situation, because he never really put himself out there. and i just don't really remember him ever, you know, stepping forward or really saying anything. it was just he wanted to be left alone, and we left him alone. >> pelley: she doesn't remember lanza after that, maybe because he wasn't going to the high school full-time. family friends told us that he was being home schooled by his mother, nancy lanza. nancy lanza told her friends, mark and louise tambascio, that adam was brilliant but disabled. did nancy lanza ever tell you specifically what her son's medical condition was, and she put a name to it? >> mark tambascio: asperger's. >> pelley: that's what she said? >> mark tambascio: yeah, yes. >> pelley: that it was asperger's syndrome? >> mark tambascio: absolutely. there's no question.

>> pelley: and for her, it was a full-time job taking care of him. >> mark tambascio: absolutely. oh, my goodness, yes. >> pelley: asperger's syndrome is a disorder within the spectrum of autism. it's characterized by social impairment, communication difficulty, and repetitive patterns of behavior. an asperger's support group told us today that patients are more prone to be victims of violence than the perpetrators of violence. and we don't know whether asperger's played any role in the shootings, but friends told us that the condition did dominate the lanzas' lives. >> louise tambascio: i mean, i know he was on... he was on medication and everything, but she home schooled him at home because he couldn't deal with the school classes sometimes. so she just home schooled adam at home, and that was her life. >> pelley: she wasn't working. she devoted her time to adam? >> louise tambascio: yeah, she didn't have to work, so that's what she did. she home schooled him and, you know, she did a lot of charitable work and everything.

>> pelley: nancy lanza appeared well off, living with her son in an upscale home. she was 52, divorced in 2009, with another, older son. in town, they say she was friendly and generous, donating time and money to charities. nancy lanza also made a hobby of shooting sports. she owned several guns. a friend said that she'd grown up that way on a farm in new hampshire. >> mark tambascio: yeah, she was. she liked to target shoot. you know, she got into it, i think, in, you know, the last few years or so. she really enjoyed it. but yes, she was an advocate. she really got into it and loved it. >> pelley: the guns adam lanza carried into the school-- a rifle and two pistols like these-- were all legal, registered to his mother under connecticut laws, which are among the strictest in the nation. the murder weapon was a semiautomatic variation on the m-16 assault rifle. it fires one round with each pull of the trigger.

the first victim friday was nancy lanza. police say they found her lying in bed, shot in the face. they also discovered the computers in the home had been smashed to bits. an f.b.i. lab is trying to recover documents from the hard drives now. and investigators will subpoena the lanzas' e-mails and text messages from service providers. motive is still a mystery. but if anyone can begin to understand an attack like this, it's robert fein and bryan vossekuil. in 1999, they went into prisons to interview and study assassins and would-be assassins for the u.s. secret service. then in 2002, the secret service published their follow-up study on 37 school shooters. robert, you've been speaking to people who are involved in the investigation at the highest levels, and i wonder what they're telling you about these early days.

>> fein: fundamentally what i hear is that this is a very complicated case, a very difficult, painful case that's going to take a long time to really unravel and understand. >> pelley: what are they saying about precedents and how this compares? >> fein: on the continuum of lone-offender attacks, this case is described as way out there on the continuum, in terms of awfulness. >> pelley: they discovered that most attackers followed a discernible pattern of behavior for weeks or even months before the attack. they call it the "pathway to violence." how does this pathway to violence manifest itself? what is it that people can look for in a person who is on this pathway, as you describe it? >> fein: people who engaged in these attacks took a series of actions, as in often selecting a particular weapon, sometimes practicing with a weapon. they thought, "i'm desperate."

they accepted the idea that violence might be an acceptable way to solve their problems. >> pelley: in how many cases did the shooter tell someone essentially what he was planning on doing before he did it? >> vossekull: in almost all of them, the student who committed the attack, the school shooter, communicated, in many instances, his intent to commit the attack. >> pelley: the events of friday struck fear into the heart of every parent who sends a child to school all across this country. i wonder what you would tell the folks at home who worry, "can i send my kid to school on monday?" >> vossekull: it is important to remember that these are extremely, extremely rare events. >> fein: any event as horrible as the attack of last friday scares everybody. but the reality in this country is that schools have been and are safer, and have become much

safer over the last several years. ( bells tolling ) >> pelley: yesterday in newtown, they released the names of the lost. we were surprised when school nurse sally cox told us that she was making a point of not hearing them-- not all at once anyway. better to take 26 blows one at a time. ( bells tolling ) [ male announcer ] it's simple physics... a body at rest tends to stay at rest... while a body in motion tends to stay in motion. staying active can actually ease arthritis symptoms. but if you have arthritis, staying active can be difficult. prescription celebrex can help relieve arthritis pain so your body can stay in motion. because just one 200mg celebrex a day can provide 24 hour relief for many with arthritis pain and inflammation. plus, in clinical studies,

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>> stahl: ever since the wreck of the "costa concordia" 11 months ago, the huge italian luxury liner has been sitting semi-submerged off the coast of tuscany, looking like a big, beached whale. it's the largest passenger ship ever capsized, easily surpassing the "titanic."

and removing the ship has turned out to be the most complicated, the most expensive, the most daunting and the riskiest salvage operation ever. the "costa concordia" is a rusting carcass, sitting precariously on two underwater mountain peaks. the swimming pools and jacuzzis where passengers sunbathed and sipped cocktails, now empty and askew. a clock remains frozen in time, marking the hour and minute when the ship lost power. and below, ghostly vestiges of the ship's contents litter the ocean floor in what the italian authorities have designated an official crime scene. 30 people died; two are still missing. >> nick sloane: welcome on board. >> stahl: thank you. nick sloane from south africa is the senior salvage master. he took us out to the wreck site. how big is that ship? >> sloane: she's huge, and what you see at the moment is only

35% of her. so 65% underneath is like an iceberg underneath there. >> stahl: now the plan is to roll the 60,000-ton ship in one piece onto an underwater platform, raise it, and then float it away so it can be cut up for scrap. so, you're planning to rotate a ship that weighs 60,000 tons. >> sloane: yeah. >> stahl: so, let me see. you're going to-- this is the ship. you have to do it like... >> sloane: we'll roll it up right. >> stahl: ...the whole thing together at once, creaking. >> sloane: all the way along the three football fields long. >> stahl: three football fields long? >> sloane: yeah. and we're going to rotate it all at the same time. >> stahl: it sounds like an experiment in defying the laws of physics. the actual work is being shared by nick sloane's titan salvage, an american wreck removal company, and micoperi, an italian engineering firm. sergio girotto is the company's project director, in charge of re-floating a 60,000-ton ship

filled with seawater. so you have to create much more buoyancy than even the original weight of the ship because of all the water. >> girotto: absolutely. absolutely. >> stahl: a team of engineers came up with something ingenious: to, in effect, weld a new ship onto the shipwreck. it starts here with the construction of towering steel boxes called "sponsons." they're gigantic. the largest ones weigh 500 tons each and stand 11 stories high, and they'll be outfitted with hoses and sophisticated air pumps to create buoyancy. here's what's supposed to happen: one by one, nine of them will be welded across the exposed side of the ship. >> girotto: they will be joined together like a big lego, outside in the open. >> stahl: and they have to be precisely welded, correct? >> girotto: the space from one sponson to the other, it is less

than two inches, so they must be fabricated with a very strict tolerance. >> stahl: this row of hydraulic pulleys will tighten a string of 36 cables attached to the sponsons, slowly rolling the ship upright. then, other steel boxes will be welded to the other side of the vessel, and, eventually, the hollow, air-filled sponsons will act like waterwings so the "costa concordia" can be floated and towed away. has this ever been done before? >> girotto: no, no. >> stahl: this is brand new? >> girotto: the brand new technology, brand new methodology. to lift a vessel in this way, it is the first time ever. >> stahl: and no one's 100% sure lifting a vessel this gigantic in one piece is going to work. it's the biggest passenger ship ever wrecked, twice the size of the "titanic."

just a year ago, it was a 15- story floating palace big enough to house a small town of 4,000 people. as this promotional video shows, it had 1,500 luxury cabins, 18 restaurants and bars, four swimming pools, five jacuzzis and a casino. the accident occurred this past january, ominously on the night of friday the 13th. nervous passengers crowded together as water gushed in. sailing too close to shore, the ship had struck a huge boulder hidden just beneath the surface. you can see that it just tore the pipes apart. >> sloane: yeah, the momentum of a large ship like this hitting that rock, she had no chance. >> stahl: almost like a shark eating the belly of a whale or something, it just ate into that. >> sloane: yeah, it was a big rock, about 96 tons. >> stahl: the wreck's an eyesore right off the beaches of tiny giglio island that has been

overrun by an armada of support vessels and an army of welders, crane operators and marine engineers. because of the angle of the ship, the workers have to take a four-day course in mountain climbing. here, they're working on the strong cables that are keeping the ship in place. much of the work is being done underwater by specially-trained salvage divers, 111 in all. ebano, who's from brazil, is being geared up and safety- checked by other divers on his team. >> sloane: he's got communication for talking. he's got the air. he's got back-up air. he's got a camera and a light. >> stahl: every one who goes in has a support team of at least five up on deck. once suited up, ebano is lowered down in a cage. the day we were there, the

divers were ratcheting, tightening, measuring those massive steel cables that run under and around the ship to tie it down so it doesn't slide off the mountain peaks and sink. it's an exacting and dangerous job, so teammates stand by on deck in case of an emergency, and a dive supervisor monitors and directs the action. >> monster: do you want to move back on your-- on your camera and give us a wide shot of exactly what's going on down there. >> stahl: duane "monster" morsner oversees a dive team. so you're just watching everything he does, listening to him? >> monster: and explaining to him exactly where to go because sometimes when you go past 30 meters, you can get narcosis and it sort of affects your-- your thinking. and obviously, if he's in trouble, i can see what the problems are and help him out and check his depth, that sort of thing. >> stahl: there's a salvage divers' camaraderie. they live in close quarters in floating barracks next to the

ship. and while they come from eight different countries, speaking different languages, they're like soldiers in combat; they have each others' back. >> morsner: move towards the bow of the "costa concordia," please. >> stahl: though these divers are in the water round the clock, each one can stay under no longer than 45 minutes at a time. they have five minutes to get from a depth of 40 feet into a decompression chamber. when a diver surfaces, it's a race to strip off his gear and get into the chamber. the divers and everyone else work round the clock, seven days and nights a week, in a race against time. they have to remove the ship before storms like this one last month break it apart. >> sloane: every storm weakens the structure, and there will be a certain point where the structure-- and she will just say, "i've had enough." >> stahl: so is that what has you worried the most, the

weather? >> sloane: yeah, yeah. when you have bad weather, you don't sleep. >> stahl: neither do the insurance companies that are footing the bill! so how much is this operation costing? >> sloane: well, basically, it's going to be around about $400 million, plus or minus, and that's a lot of money. >> stahl: did your company ever consider proposing just blowing it up? because i know a lot of salvage operations, they just dynamite... >> sloane: yeah, some places in the world, that would be a solution. in this scenario, i don't think it would ever be allowed. >> stahl: is the reason because this is such a tourist area? >> sloane: oh, the environment is the number one priority. >> stahl: number one. that's because the ship settled in a nationally-protected marine park and coral reef that's home to dolphins, exotic fish, these huge rare mussels and more than 700 other botanical and animal species. sergio! >> girotto: hi, lesley.

>> stahl: sergio girotto took us to one of six shipyards in italy that have been pressed into action. at this one north of venice, they're building this huge steel platform. it's one of six platforms that'll be lowered into the water, its legs anchored into the hard granite sea floor. when the ship is rolled upright, it will roll onto them. so the ship is over there? and what, it's going to roll... >> girotto: yeah, it's going to rotate and rotate slowly to rest on this platform, exactly the same area where we are standing. >> stahl: the platforms are necessary to keep the 60,000-ton ship from sliding off its mountain peaks, down into the abyss. but getting the platforms to the wreck site is an operation in and of itself. >> girotto: and we make the tour of italy. >> stahl: they will be floated by barge from the shipyard to

the shipwreck off giglio island. around the heel, around the toe and up to giglio. >> girotto: up to giglio. it is a long trip. >> stahl: how long? >> girotto: it's going to take... it's going to take 15 days. i tell you, it is a gigantic project. if you simply think of the quantity of steel, is three times the weight of the tower eiffel. >> stahl: of the eiffel tower? >> girotto: exactly. three times the weight of the tower. >> stahl: out at the wreck site, they're lowering giant pipes that are used to drill holes in the seabed for the legs of those massive platforms. so these are these big pipes that you're putting down. to protect the environment, the drill bit will be enclosed in the pipe in order to contain any debris from the digging. wow, look how huge! >> sloane: as you can see, this is about eight feet. >> stahl: eight feet is the diameter of the legs of those platforms, and the holes for the

legs have to line up almost perfectly. when you put the platforms down, what's your margin of error? >> sloane: the error that we can allow is less than six inches between them. so, if we are more than six inches out, the platforms aren't going to fit. >> stahl: has there ever been a salvage project this big? >> sloane: no, this is-- with the complexities and the amount of engineering, the scale of the equipment that we're bringing in, the size of the teams, this is by far the largest that's ever been done. >> stahl: in the history of salvage? >> sloane: in the history of salvage. >> stahl: let's talk about the day that you are going to rotate the ship onto the platforms. if something's not going right, can you stop it? >> sloane: no, you can't stop it. you have one chance. >> stahl: one chance? >> sloane: once you start, you have to finish. >> stahl: we've spoken to engineers, marine engineers. they think you have a 50/50 chance. >> sloane: no, it's more than

50/50, for sure. >> stahl: it is? >> sloane: basically, we've got a large engineering team. we have over 200 engineering documents, and everything proves that it can be done, so... >> stahl: on a computer? >> sloane: yeah, on a computer. some parts of the ship will collapse internally. it's going to be very noisy. there's going to be a lot of creaking, groaning, steel snapping. but she'll come upright. >> stahl: steel snapping? >> sloane: yeah. >> stahl: that doesn't sound good. >> sloane: yeah, well, there will be smaller bits of steel, but the larger structure will take it. >> stahl: is there a plan b? >> sloane: we have plan b and c, but we don't want to get there. >> stahl: "there" is cutting up the ship in place, which would be an environmental catastrophe. if all goes according to plan a, the ship will be rotated next summer, towed to a dry dock in sicily and cut up for scrap. there is so much ship, that process will take two years. >> welcome to the cbs sports

update fed by e trade. i'm james brown with the scores from around the nfl today. houston has won the a.f.c. south. denver has now won nine straight. seattle kept pace in the n.f.c. west and pittsburgh' loss to dallas puts baltimore into the playoffs. atlanta improved its n.f.c. best record at 12-2, washington is now atop the n.f.c. east. green bay clinched the n.f.c. north while minnesota remains in contention. for more sports news and information, simply go to cbssports.com. ith more? then don't get nickle and dimed by high cost investments and annoying account fees. at e-trade, our free easy-to-use online tools and experienced retirement specialists can help you build a personalized plan. and with our no annual fee iras and a wide range of low cost investments, you can execute the plan you want at a low cost. so meet with us, or go to etrade.com for a great retirement plan with low cost investments. ♪ ♪

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>> safer: given the unspeakable horror of the last few days, we thought we might end tonight's broadcast with another look at a place of reflection, reflection that goes back centuries: the vatican library and its vast collection of historic treasures. it was founded over five centuries ago when europe was coming out of the dark ages. it was a period of humanism when the world-- and, in particular, the catholic church-- was open to new ideas in philosophy, science and individual liberty; a celebration of the human spirit. it's the pope's library, but it contains much more than church documents-- manuscripts going back nearly 2,000 on music, math and exploration; even cookbooks and love letters.

a place for scholars only, but a place we can only hope can inspire an end to barbarism. welcome to the 15th century. in rome, turn a corner and you bump into antiquity, a delicious mixed salad of present and past. we arrived at the vatican to find a medieval costume parade in progress. what better way to begin a trek through history? >> timothy janz: there's about two million printed books. >> safer: two million printed books. and inside the library, the past surrounded us again, as we were shown the magnificent building and its riches. >> janz: this is the urbino bible. >> safer: for instance, this spectacular bible, commissioned in 1476 by the duke of urbino... >> janz: ...who wanted to have a very fancy bible. >> safer: there you go. >> janz: and this is what he got. >> safer: library curator

timothy janz tells us the bible took years to make by hand, letter by letter, picture by picture. >> janz: decorated with real gold. >> safer: it's just one of the library's 80,000 handwritten manuscripts from the ages before the printing press. add to that those two million or so printed books, christian and pagan, sacred and profane, in virtually every language known to man. there are thousands of prints and drawings, windows on the past. and a huge collection of ancient coins-- this was the money of palestine 2,000 years ago-- including the kind of silver coins judas was said to have been paid to betray christ. here is a map of the world, drawn 50 years before columbus; at its edge, the towers of paradise.

and an immediate best seller, columbus' description of his voyage to the new world, published in 1493. in a certain way, the library is kind of the attic of western civilization. >> father michael collins: it's so true. and it's like many attics, you know? you put things up all the time. you keep on pushing over boxes to make space for more things. >> safer: father michael collins is an irish priest who's written extensively about the vatican, where the library's shelves, if you put them end to end, would stretch for 31 miles. is there anyone, any single person who really knows what the library holds? >> collins: nobody knows exactly what's there, because it will be impossible for the human brain to understand, to remember the titles, who wrote it, when they were written. >> monsignor cesare pasini: it is quite a treasure of humanity that you have here. >> safer: monsignor cesare pasini presides over the

library. its great hall-- essentially unchanged over the centuries-- is a picture gallery of antiquity: saints, philosophers, and depictions of the great libraries of the pre-christian world-- babylon, athens, alexandria. a shrine to learning and to books. there's one person who can actually take a book out of the library, correct? >> pasini: yes, the pope can... can have every book in the library. ♪ ♪ >> safer: if st. peter's basilica represents the splendor of the church writ large, the library nearby is a testament to the monks and scribes who made magnificent miniatures in times past. here, some devotional music commissioned by pope leo x, and the text of the christmas mass

used at the altar by alexander vi: both manuscripts five centuries old, written on parchment-- treated animal skin. >> christopher celenza: you will often see the skin of sheep being used, sometimes goats. >> safer: christopher celenza, director of the american academy in rome, is a scholar who's often used the library. he says that writing on parchment was not only tedious, but expensive. >> celenza: if a monastery wanted to produce a bible that perhaps had 400 pages, it might cost you 400 sheep. it's an investment. >> safer: beyond the academic work, did you ever just come here to hang out and flip through stuff and see what you might discover? >> celenza: i think all of us have come here, at one time or another, with the hope of discovering something, having a general direction in which we're going, but not quite knowing where we'll wind up. >> safer: you might find, as curator adalbert roth showed us,

drawings of a german jousting tournament in 1481, or an old cookbook, telling us that roman foodies in the fourth century dined on chicken, veal, seafood, pancakes in milk, and whipped pear cake... >> janz: how to hack away at your enemy's wall. >> safer: ...or, from an 11th century treatise on the art of war, a byzantine soldier brandishing a flame thrower, something the greeks invented 1,500 years earlier... or henry viii's love letters to anne boleyn. >> collins: the letters are certainly among the most bizarre and unusual that you'd expect to find in the pope's archives. >> safer: there are 17 of them, handwritten by the king of england to the woman he would make the second of his six wives, and later have beheaded. >> adalbert roth: there's the little heart... >> safer: henry signs his name with a heart, like a smitten schoolboy.

he tells of his "fervents of love", his great loneliness without her. "wishing myself," he says, "in my sweetheart's arms, whose pretty dukkys i trust shortly to kiss," "dukkys" being a term in henry's day for... well, use your imagination. what is that doing in the vatican library? >> collins: we don't know how they ended up here in the vatican. it may be that some spy, maybe one of my priestly predecessors, may have stolen these letters and brought them to rome to present in the case if a trial was made for henry's request for a divorce. >> safer: but the church refused to let henry divorce catherine of aragon so he could marry anne. he married her anyway, broke with rome, and took control of the church of england. the country was largely converted to the protestant faith. >> celenza: this is one of the moments in the 16th century that leads to the fracturing of

christianity, and to much of the bloodshed and the wars that, especially, the later 16th century was known for. >> safer: as man explored the planet, a scientific revolution was also underway. by the mid-17th century, navigators had mapped much of the world in remarkable detail. >> roth: rio de janiero. cuzco. mexico city. >> safer: galileo turned his eyes and his telescope on the heavens. here, from 1612, are his drawings of sunspots. for his insistence that the sun is the center of the universe and the earth moves around it, the church branded him a heretic. >> collins: the pope at that time, pope urban viii, was a very good friend of galileo. said to him, "look, you know, i agree with you. you're right. but i can't approve of this because i'm the pope. and if i go against this, it looks as if i'm going against the bible. and i'm going to shake to the foundation the belief of the world, and the world's christians, not just catholics."

>> safer: just 380 years later, in 1992, pope john paul ii apologized for the galileo affair. his successor, benedict xvi, has sought middle ground in the centuries-old skirmishes between the church and science. in a recent sermon, he said even the big bang theory of the creation of the universe is not in conflict with faith because god's mind was behind it. >> this is the tricky, the tricky part... >> safer: and backstage at the pope's library, science is brought to bear on crumbling books, as restoration workers deal with water damage, mold and the ravages of time. it seems endless, this work, yes? >> angela nunez gaetan: it's endless, yes, obviously. >> safer: angela gaetan and the others go inch by inch, patching

and strengthening ancient pages, scratching off paste put on by well-meaning restorers centuries ago-- paste that's turning acid, eating away at the page. mario tiburzi seldom reads what he's repairing-- it's too distracting, especially if the writer happens to be michelangelo. >> mario tiburzi: when i work on the michelangelo papers, it was the same that i work on mickey mouse paper. ( laughs ) >> safer: mickey mouse, eh? a difficult job may take months or even years. but consider the result. >> gaetan: 1,000 years after us, i hope that they can read the same thing that we are reading now. >> safer: the library's most valued documents go back almost 2,000 years, nearly to the time of st. peter, the first pope, whose tomb lies beneath the basilica that bears his name.

his letters to the faithful make up two books of the new testament. and here is a copy, written in greek on papyrus by one of peter's disciples around the year 200, a mere century or so after his death. >> pasini: "in the beginning, it was the word, and the word was 'god'." >> safer: and from the same period, the gospel of luke and part of the gospel of john, also written on papyrus, venerated by early christians in egypt, preserved for centuries in a desert monastery. >> pasini: "the bread for today give us..." >> safer: they contain the oldest known copy of the lord's prayer, so fragile we were only allowed to see replicas. >> pasini: that great treasure of papyrus, i think, is the most important treasure of christianity. >> safer: with our tour nearly over, it seemed as if the library's collection had come to life in the streets of the

eternal city: the centurions and crusaders, the centuries of faith and folly, time present and time past. leaving the library, we thought there's something, something almost magical to be immersed in this place, to breathe the air and touch the hand of history. but we can still help you see your big picture. with the fidelity guided portfolio summary, you choose which accounts to track and use fidelity's analytics to spot trends, gain insights, and figure out what you want to do next. all in one place. i'm meredith stoddard and i helped create the fidelity guided portfolio summary. it's one more innovative reason serious investors are choosing fidelity. now get 200 free trades when you open an account.

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>> pelley: now an update of a story that we called "hubble" about america's space telescope. it was first reported eight years ago by our late colleague ed bradley. >> bradley: the images are like nothing ever seen before, as much art as science. visions of a universe more violent and fantastic than anyone had dared to imagine. everything from razor-sharp views of the planets in our own solar system to the vast, stellar nurseries where stars and planets are born.

>> pelley: in orbit since 1990, the ten-ton hubble's days are numbered. astronauts made their final service call in 2009, and it is due to be replaced by a new telescope by 2018. but hubble isn't done. this past week, nasa announced it has uncovered seven previously unknown galaxies formed near the dawn of time, some 13.7 billion years ago. one astronomer has compared the new hubble ultra-deep time exposures to the first ultra- sounds of an infant-- baby pictures of the universe, including one galaxy that formed less than 380 million years after the big bang, its light just arriving at the earth now. with these pictures, nasa says, hubble has reached its technological limits. this is as far back in time and space as the venerable telescope can peer. i'm scott pelley. we'll be back next week with another edition of "60 minutes,"

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