The 2020 edition of the Pontifical Academies Award has undergone an inevitable postponement due to the Covid emergency.

At the proposal of the Pontifical Academies Coordinating Council, the 2020 Award, reserved for the Pontifical Roman Academy of Archaeology and the Pontifical Academy Cultorum Martyrum, and consisting of the Gold Medal of the Pontificate, has been assigned to Professor Győző Vörös, member of the Hungarian Academy of Arts, for the project “The Machaerus Archaeological Excavations”, illustrated in three volumes published by Edizioni Terra Santa (2013, 2015, 2019).

Also on the proposal of the Coordinating Council of the Pontifical Academies, the Silver Medal of the Pontificate was awarded to Dr. Domenico Benoci, for his unpublished doctoral thesis Le Iscrizioni Cristiane dell'Area I di Callisto, discussed at the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, and to Dr. Gabriele Castiglia, for the edited monograph Topografia Cristiana della Toscana centro-settentrionale (Città e campagne dal IV al X secolo)”, Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, Vatican City 2020.

The Meeting of the Pontifical Academies, at which the Secretary of State, on behalf of the Holy Father, will present the winners with their respective Awards, will be held early next year, coinciding with the start of the commemoration of the Bicentennial of the birth of the archaeologist Giovanni Battista De Rossi, founder of modern Christian archaeology and Magister of the Collegium Cultorum Martyrum.

Vatican, 12 May 2021, Memorial of the Holy Martyrs Pancras, Nereus and Achilles