"We were able to meet also with Father Farina, the prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Library, regarding a project to digitize a portion of its very fine collection of Syriac materials. It seems that there are no insuperable obstacles to such a project. Neither the prefect nor his ecclesiastical superiors—thanks to a remarkable series of contacts and experiences—appear to have any objection to admitting a group of Mormon scholars to their collection and jointly publishing an electronic selection of their manuscripts with Brigham Young University. At this point, I would like you to consider for just a second how very noteworthy that is.
"Bishop Soro hopes that any work that we do with the Vatican on a compact disk will prove to be only the beginning. And, in fact, others at the Vatican have suggested that we move beyond their Syriac collection to their vast wealth of Greek biblical manuscripts. Bishop Soro has now been to BYU on two different occasions and has learned a bit about Latter-day Saint beliefs. During our time with him in Rome, he suggested a theme for a second Vatican-based compact disk: "We could do something," he said, "about the deification of human beings. Your people would be interested in that, wouldn't they?" He remarked that his encounters with Mormons had resensitized him to the former prominence of that doctrine in his own very old tradition. He had actually delivered a sermon on the topic, which he said was one of the best received sermons he had ever given." (From the article: Other Voices from the Dust)
Lumen Gentium, a document from Vatican II stated that “the eternal Father, in accordance with the utterly gratuitous and mysterious design of his wisdom and goodness, created the whole universe, and chose to raise up men to share in his own divine life.” [LG 2; quoted by Pope Paul VI, “Original Sin and Modern Science,” July 11, 1966, in The Pope Speaks 11 (1966): 230.]
Frans Jozef van Beeck, S.J., has written that “what Christ is by ‘birth’ or ‘nature' we are by ‘adoption’ (Gal 4.5), ‘rebirth’ (John 3.3), or ‘grace’” ‘sharers of the divine nature’ (II Peter 1.4), or, as the Church Fathers liked to say, ‘gods by grace’” (159-60). (God Encountered: A Contemporary Catholic Systematic Theology. Volume One: Understanding the Christian Faith (Harper and Row 1989): 63, 87.)
Catholic scholar Thomas Weinandy has recently stated that Irenaeus’ statement (that God became man that man might know how to become god) “proclaimed a truth that would
reverberate ever more loudly throughout patristic Christology.”
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