to be michelangelo. >> mario tiburzi: when i work on the michelangelo papers, it was the same that i ) >> 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