The solemn profession of faith made by Paul VI to close the Year of Faith he had called for the nineteenth centenary of the martyrdom of Saints Peter and Paul. Fulfilling, as he says, the mandate given to Peter to confirm his brethren at a moment of widespread questioning, the Pope pronounces a creed which — without being strictly speaking a dogmatic definition — repeats in substance the Creed of Nicaea with the developments the age required. It professes the one God in three Persons; the Incarnation, passion, resurrection and coming again of the Son; the Holy Spirit and his work; original sin and its transmission; the Immaculate Conception and Assumption of the Blessed Virgin; the one Church, apostolic and hierarchical, built on Peter and his successors; the sacrifice of the Mass and the change of the whole substance of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ; and the communion of saints with purgatory and eternal life.