Relics

[Mighty_Emperor]

Just a general thread for religious relics which get brushed off every now and again.

However, compared to chunks of saints or the true cros these matchsticks don't realy compare but in some ways its not the item its the significnace invested in them.

Church cherishes ‘miracle’

Fatima relics to get place of honor

Trevis R. Badeaux
[email protected]
May 11, 2004


P.C. Piazza/The Lafayette Daily Advertiser
From left, Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School students Ben Becnel, Jessica Boudreaux, Jake Sloane and Kelly Parker look Monday at three relics from the holy site in Fatima, Portugal, on display at the church offices in Lafayette.
LAFAYETTE — Three relics from the 1917 church-sanctioned miracle at Fatima, Portugal, will be the focus of a special ceremony Thursday at Our Lady of Fatima Church on Johnston Street.

Events will begin just before 8 a.m. when students at the nearby Our Lady of Fatima Catholic School carry the relics in a hand-crafted, bronze reliquary from the school to the church. Services will include a Mass celebrated by Bishop Michael Jarrell and an annual May Crowning service.

The relics, which the church received last fall, are three splinters: One from the tree on which Mary, the mother of Jesus, is believed to have appeared in 1917. The other two were taken from the wooden coffins of two child witnesses of the apparition.

“These are pieces of wood from a miracle,” said Jessica Boudreaux, 14, an eighth-grade student at Fatima school. “It’s cool that we got that. Not everyone can.”

For Kelly Parker, 14, also in the eighth grade at Fatima school, the relics are a “cool” reminder of the miracle she learned about in school.

“It’s nice to know it was real,” Parker said.

According to church records, the Blessed Mother appeared six times to Francisco and Jacinto Martos and Lucia dos Santos in a field called Cova da Iria, which is near Fatima, Portugal. The visions occurred between May 13 and Oct. 13, 1917.



P.C. Piazza/The Lafayette Daily Advertiser
At right is a closer look at the relics, housed in a bronze reliquary.
The children said Mary made several revelations and requests. She asked for frequent recitation of the rosary, a Roman Catholic prayer. Another dealt with the end of World War I and the onslaught of a second world war. One was a prophecy that for decades was deemed by the church too horrible to reveal.

In 2000, Pope John Paul II revealed the prophecy. A bishop in white would be struck by a bullet. John Paul II survived an attempted assassination May 13, 1981, in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. That day, he wore white.

A Vatican council declared the Fatima apparition worthy of belief in October 1930 after a seven-year investigation.

Francisco and Jacinta, two of the child witnesses, recently became “blessed,” one of the final steps on the Roman Catholic church ladder toward sainthood. Two of the splinters come from their coffins. Sister Lucia, the third, resides in a Carmelite convent in Coimbra, Portugal, near Fatima.

If Mary appeared today in Acadiana, several Fatima students said they would ask her what it’s like being the mother of Jesus Christ.

Ben Becnel, 8, a second-grader, had a different idea.

“I’d ask her to come to my house,” he said.

Source

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Pope Makes Gesture to Orthodox Church

Thu Oct 21, 8:24 AM ET

Europe - AP

VATICAN CITY - The pope won't be going to Istanbul, but in a gesture to the Orthodox Church he is returning the relics of two saints that were seized by Crusaders 800 years ago, Vatican (news - web sites) officials said Thursday.

Ecumenical Patriarch Barthlomew I of Constantinople, the spiritual leader of Orthodox Christians, had asked for the return of the relics when he met with Pope John Paul (news - web sites) II at the Vatican in June. At that time, he also invited the pope to visit the seat of the Orthodox Church in Istanbul.

Because of the 84-year-old pontiff's frail condition, the Vatican has reduced his foreign travel and he won't make the trip to Istanbul. John Paul visited Istanbul in 1979.

Instead, a Vatican delegation will return the relics at the end of November for the Orthodox feast day of Saint Andrew, officials said.

The relics — the bones of the patriarchs Saints John Chrysostom and Gregory Nazianzen — disappeared from Constantinople, the modern day Istanbul, in the sack of 1204 by Crusaders. They have been kept in St. Peter's Basilica.

The patriarch's June visit was intended to underline both sides' commitment to Christian unity and to restart stalled theological talks.

Christianity split into Western and Eastern branches in the 11th century over the growing power of the papacy, an issue that remains a principal source of division.

During his talks with Barthlomew, the pope had restated his remorse for the sacking of Constantinople that contributed to the collapse of the Byzantine Empire about three centuries later.

Source

Thank goodness it isn't a rude gesture

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

After 800 years, church leaders are still making bones over claim to saintly relics

John Hooper in Rome
Sunday November 28, 2004
The Observer

Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians were last night locked in dispute over an 800-year-old war crime and a box of 1,600-year-old bones that was meant to have brought them a giant step closer to reunification.

At a ceremony in St Peter's Basilica yesterday the Vatican handed back relics belonging to two saints of inestimable importance to the Orthodox world. It had been hoped the return of the remains of the 4th century prelates, St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian, would be the most important symbolic contribution to relations between the two churches since the meeting between Pope Paul VI and the then titular head of the Orthodox Christians 40 years ago.

But as the two men's successors, Pope John Paul II and the ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, presided over the ritual, the Pope's spokesman issued a statement contradicting the Orthodox version of history.

It also emerged that the Vatican would not be handing back all the bones. A single line in a booklet prepared for yesterday's ceremony said the pontiff was returning only 'a part of the relics'.

The Vatican appeared to have been stung into action by Orthodox claims the bones were stolen by Crusaders. In a sermon yesterday, Patriarch Bartholomew said the handing back of the relics was a 'warning to all those who arbitrarily possess and retain treasures of the faith, piety and civilisation of others'.

A press release from the ecumenical patriarchate last week said the bones of both saints were stolen after Crusaders seized the then capital of the Byzantine empire, Constantinople - the modern-day Istanbul - in 1204.

'After the pillage that followed, the holy relics of both these two saints were taken first to Venice, and later on to Rome,' said the statement.

But according to the Pope's spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, St Gregory's bones 'reached Rome in the 8th century, at the time of the Iconoclastic persecution, so that they could be kept safe.' An earlier statement had said they were brought by Byzantine nuns. As for St John, the Holy See's daily bulletin of last Wednesday stated that they had been transferred to Rome 'probably at the time of the Latin empire of Constantinople (1204-1258)'.

Navarro-Valls said 'certain media' had portrayed the pontiff's gesture as a 'reparation' and a means for the Pope to 'beg pardon' on behalf of the Catholic church for the removal of the relics from the ecumenical patriarchate during the crusade.

This interpretation, said Navarro-Valls, was 'historically inexact'. The handover was a 'return, not a restitution'. The Pope himself did some sly point-scoring in a sermon yesterday, noting the two saints 'always professed their communion with this Apostolic see, the Church of Rome'. Both men died long before the schism that split Orthodox Christians and Roman Catholics in 1054.

St John Chrysostom and St Gregory the Theologian are two of the three so-called hierarchs whose annual feast day, 30 January, is an Orthodox holiday. Two days of celebration and ceremony have been organised to mark the return of their relics to the patriarchate, which is still located in Istanbul.

The bones, resting on cushions of yellow velvet, were handed over to the Patriarch in specially-made caskets of crystal and alabaster. He kissed the caskets before they were carried away on biers by Vatican ushers to be loaded onto a jet for their return journey.

Yesterday's dispute risked weakening the position of Patriarch Bartholomew, whose close ties with Rome have been criticised by other Orthodox leaders.

Source

 

[Mighty_Emperor]

Thursday, June 15, 2006. Issue 3432. Page 1.


Ancient Hand Inspires Talk of Miracles


By Anastasiya Lebedev
Staff Writer

Thousands of people, many of them old women wearing long skirts and head scarves, shaded themselves with umbrellas as they waited for hours Wednesday to see and kiss a chest containing the purported right hand of John the Baptist.

"It's not every day that they bring something so holy to Moscow," Svetlana Chausova said, standing near the head of the line at 1 p.m. Chausova, 31, and most of her family had been waiting to get into Christ the Savior Cathedral since 6 a.m. Her husband had to give up earlier to go to work.

The relic, on loan from the Serbian Orthodox Church, is in Moscow for nine days and on Friday will leave for a cross-country tour of eight cities, including Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, Vladikavkaz and St. Petersburg. After that it will go to Ukraine and Belarus.

The hand is revered as being the one that John the Baptist laid on Jesus' head while baptizing him 2,000 years ago. As the Church tells it, the Apostle Luke asked the elders of the village where John the Baptist was buried for his body but only managed to obtain the hand. The hand was kept in a church for centuries, seized and moved several times, and then ended up in Russia in the late 18th century. Fleeing monarchists took it abroad after the 1917 Revolution.


On display at Christ the Savior Cathedral is an ornate, bejeweled wooden chest containing a mummified hand with two fingers missing. Orthodox Christians kiss the box and pray before it, believing the hand has miraculous powers.

The line of believers on Wednesday went all the way around the park near the massive cathedral. Every spot in the shade teemed with people trying to get out of the sun. Fuzz from blooming poplar trees blew through the air.

Well over 10,000 people were expected to try to get into the church Wednesday. Some 300 people per hour were filing through the church, said police officer Maria Voyevodina.

The average wait during the day was at least nine hours. People with children were allowed into a faster line.

Klavdiya Frygina, 87, said she had spent only 90 minutes waiting to get in because Jesus had helped her. She explained that a church choir singer had let her cut in line after she had walked to the front to see what was happening and had collapsed in the heat.

Police officers can go to the front of the line when they get off duty -- a reward for keeping an eye on the crowd.

The relic was on display from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. when it first arrived. But the church authorized around-the-clock viewing this week due to the long line.

Several groups of women in line huddled under umbrellas to sing prayers. Nuns in long black habits and priests surrounded by their parishioners waited patiently and spoke of a holy apparition. Father Alexander from Zvenigorod, near Moscow, said that people waiting in line Friday had seen a rainbow halo around the sun and that attempts to photograph it resulted in images of an oil lamp with a blood-red cross over it. Marina, 75, who did not want to give her last name, said she had seen the rainbow and the photographs. She said she had seen another holy apparition in her hometown of Ramenskoye, near Moscow, last month, when a cross appeared in the sky over her church after a religious service.

Alexei Zagalsky, 13, and Timofei Zholninsky, 14, said they had come with their families but had managed to wiggle ahead in line. Zholninsky said praying to the relic would help their future.

"Yeah, when we're dead," Zagalsky quipped, causing his friend to argue that the prayers might help them with their university entrance exams. "All right, it could help us earlier than that," Zagalsky conceded.

The metro station exit leading to the cathedral was lined with panhandlers, apparently counting on the generosity of those going to see the relic. An ice cream vendor frantically handed out cones to perspiring customers.

Fotina, a 45-year-old nun, walked along the line of waiting believers to collect donations for the restoration of the 16th-century Poshekhonsky Convent, 500 kilometers northeast of Moscow in the Yaroslavl region. She said the convent, where she lives, had sent her to Moscow to collect money while the relic was in town.

Raisa, 65, who had been waiting since 6:30 a.m., said she had seen many relics and had been healed by praying to them. She refused to elaborate.

Nikolai, 50, came from the town of Chekhov, near Moscow, to pray for his wife, who was recovering after surgery.

Standing next to him with a violin case, Alla Kharitonova, 27, said she was running between the line and concerts scheduled for the day. She wore jeans but said she had a skirt in her bag to put on once she got inside the church.

Rimma Golubeva, 70, said she had heard that the hand had healed a man this week. She herself planned to pray for God to send a tsar to rule Russia. "Until there is a tsar, Russia won't lift its head," she said.

Sergei Kislitsyn, 27, who got up at 4:30 a.m. to catch a train from the Tver region, emerged from the church with a bewildered smile at 2:30 p.m. "It was like being hit over the head, only spiritually," Kislitsyn said.

He said he had seen other relics but had never had such a powerful experience. Asked what he had prayed for, he said, "To stop smoking. And to be saved, of course."

www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2006/06/15/003.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Religious relics for sale
Eyewitness News' Lucy Yang
(New York - WABC, October 24, 2006) - You can buy just about anything on the Internet, including religious relics. Relics are artifacts considered sacred by the Catholic Church. We're talking about a bone, a piece of flesh or clothing worn by a saint.

All those are for sale on the Internet -- and the church, well, it doesn't like that.
Inside a gold cross and you will see two tiny slivers of wood. The Catholic Church believes these are splinters from the cross of Jesus and has declared this a sacred relic.

Father Kazimierz A. Kowalski, Church of Our Lady of Good Counsel: "Those little chards are more valuable than this even if this was solid gold."

Now look on the Internet and you will see hundreds of such religious relics for sale, and that has Catholics crying sacrilege.

Andrew Walther, International Crusade for Holy Relics: "They were never designed to be objects of profits ... designed to be objects of devotion."

It is strictly against the canon law and against Catholic decency to sell such relics -- except that has not slowed the auction of sacred items to the highest bidder.

The International Crusade for Holy Relics at first tried to buy back the pieces only to learn it was self defeating. Members were unknowingly bidding against each other and adding to the very market they were trying to stop.

So they have turned to education, reaching out to sellers to let them know it is sinful to peddle the soul of the church and criminal to sell human remains.

Even though E-bay does not allow the trafficking of body parts, a quick look shows many of the items claim to be exactly that: the blood, bones, or flesh of martyrs and saints.

There's also there's the issue of fraud. Only Rome can authenticate a relic. If believers really want one in their homes, they can contact their bishop and save hundreds of dollars.

(Copyright 2006 WABC-TV)

http://abclocal.go.com/wabc/story?secti ... id=4692876

 

[Timble2]

Without questionintg their authenticicity. IIRC it’s been claimed that if all the relics of the “True Cross” were put together, you’d be able to build a log cabin…and the "sacred prepuce" would cover a tennis court.


Funny that there's quests for the Holy Grail, but not for the Sacred Prepuce....

 

[gordonrutter]

With regard to the True Cross every time a bit is removed it repairs itself so it will never run out, at least according to one of the neneteenth century popes

Gordon

 

[Mythopoeika]

With regard to the True Cross every time a bit is removed it repairs itself so it will never run out, at least according to one of the neneteenth century popes

Gordon

Great! World fuel shortage sorted!

 

[ramonmercado]

Roman shops selling false "relics" of John Paul II

Nov. 08 (CWNews.com) - Fraudulent "relics" of the late Pope John Paul II (bio - news) are being sold in souvenir shops and sidewalk stands near the Vatican, the I Media news agency reports.


Medals that are being sold, containing a small strip of fabric that was supposedly rubbed against the tomb of the late Pope John Paul, have not received any authorization from the Vatican. A clerk at one store near the Vatican claimed, without any supporting evidence, that the fabric contained in the medals came from vestments once worn by the Pontiff.

http://www.cwnews.com/news/viewstory.cfm?recnum=47532

 

[OldTimeRadio]

IIRC it’s been claimed that if all the relics of the “True Cross” were put together, you’d be able to build a log cabin.

A certain Mr. Mark Twain claimed that the pieces of the True Cross in existence would provide sufficent lumber to construct a battleship.

But a Christian statistician of Twain's day (Protestant, apparently, rather than Roman Catholic) supposedly took up the challenge and computed that the Cross fragments in existence (including the material possessed by the Vatican) would add up to one fair-sized Cross.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

With regard to the True Cross every time a bit is removed it repairs itself so it will never run out, at least according to one of the neneteenth century popes

I had real problems accepting that one even as a 10-year-old in parochial school fifth grade

If this is true, I reasoned, it wouldn't matter if you removed an almost-microscopic bit of wood fiber with a sharp razor blade or many board feet with a saw.

In fact all you'd have to do is to slice away a few fibers, leave them behind, and then drag the True Cross home.

The Vatican's Cross would itself re-grow from those fibers.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

In all fairness to the Church, the number of very-nearly-microscopic "relics" you could shave from a ten- or twelve-foot-long section of heavy lumber would most likely be in the millions.

 

[rynner2]

With regard to the True Cross every time a bit is removed it repairs itself so it will never run out, at least according to one of the neneteenth century popes

Gordon

Great! World fuel shortage sorted!

Hmmm.. I wonder if this would be carbon neutral, or what..? 8)

 

[JamesWhitehead]

Mention of a hand earlier on this thread brought to mind a North West relic, the Holy Hand of Edmund Arrowsmith.

This page and many others recount the tale of his martyrdom but the thing itself does not seem to be photographed. I have seen a Victorian engraving somewhere.

This page says how it is kept:

"Close to my hometown in the north of England is a church—St Oswald’s if I remember right—that has a particularly ugly relic: the Holy Hand of Edmund Arrowsmith. It is usually kept in a glass bell jar and, mercifully, covered up with a kind of black glove. But once a month or on special occasions the hand is unveiled and people come from far around to be blessed by it. By this gnarled 450 year old shrivelled fist cut from a martyr. And the people who come cover the whole range from the merely interested to the desperate; from spiritual tourists to the seriously sick and the frantic parents and friends who bring them. Hoping for a cure and hoping for an end to their own guilt at being healthy."


8)

 

[DeeDeeTee]

Re: multiplicity of relics -

I think they are well aware that there are enough bits or cross/nails/bones etc... to kit out quite a few spares of various saints and a couple dozen crosses - so they invented classes of relics.

- 1st class are corporeal parts of saints as well as artifacts from Christ's passion
- 2nd class are bits of cloths and household artifacts touched by saints
- 3rd class are items that have 'touched' second or first class relics

Clearly a bit of mingling has been alleged on a large scale....

BTW I got this snippet of info in a fascinating book that I'm going through at the moment: Charles Panati's 'Sacred Origins of Profound things: The stories behind the rites and rituals of the world's religions'. For someone like myself who has never been exposed directly to any religion of any sort it's a great primer.

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I think they are well aware that there are enough bits or cross/nails/bones etc... to kit out quite a few spares of various saints and a couple dozen crosses - so they invented classes of relics.

As I've written before Mark Twain wrote that there were enough fragment of the True Cross around and about to build a battleship. In actuality there seem just about enough to build....well, a cross.

- 3rd class are items that have 'touched' second or first class relics

And doesn't touching a third-class relic to another item also create a new third-class relic?

The Nazis used exactly this method in creating Swastika flags. Each major battle or auditoriun flag was touched to the Blood Flag from the Beer Hall Putsch of 1923. But even "toy" flags were made in the same way, although the flag they touched was several times removed from the original Blood Flag.

So I would assume that Neo-Nazis likely use this method even today, for a new flag need only to be touched to any swastika flag manufactured during the days of the Third Reich.

 

[DeeDeeTee]

As I've written before Mark Twain wrote that there were enough fragment of the True Cross around and about to build a battleship. In actuality there seem just about enough to build....well, a cross.

Seemingly there are about 30-40 nails held in churches throughout europe that all claim to be the nails that they used in the cruxcifiction of Christ, which is perhaps the work of an over-zealous roman or maybe they found the bag of nails that the soldiers used.

Also at one point in the Middle ages there was up to 18 seperate locations which held Jesus's foreskin, but as anyone can see that's stretching it a bit

And doesn't touching a third-class relic to another item also create a new third-class relic?

That makes sense. I suppose the problem is as soon as you start to get a multiplicity of the same object - and given the dubious origin of most of them - how can you be competely sure that you've 'touched' the original 1st or 2nd class object to 'pass the holy charge' about. Better to be sure and allow third class objects the ability.

Mind you, on an informal basis - as I'm assuming that to really create a relic there will need to be an official statement from the church - if we assume that mere touching creates relic - at some point in the future the entire human world becomes a third-class relic...

 

[OldTimeRadio]

I just remembered that "relic" was the old word for "widow."

And then I thouight of the wonderful old British tombstone which after the deceased's name and birth and death details appended, "His lonely widow, young, comely and wealthy, resides at ______ Street, No. ___."

She was obviously a "first class relic."

 

[ramonmercado]

I think this belongs here. One of the robes might have belonged to Francis.

Published online: 5 September 2007; | doi:10.1038/news070903-7

Saint's robes carbon dated
Relics of St Francis of Assisi unveiled.
Emiliano Feresin


Four Franciscan churches in central Italy claim that they each hold a habit of St Francis of Assisi, the friar who founded the Franciscan order in the early 1200s. Carbon dating has now substantiated one of those claims, and helped to shore up a story from the church's history many centuries later.

In Italy, religious relics are venerated by millions of Catholics who believe that God works miracles through them, or who simply fear them. Every year more than three million visitors come to the major shrine of St Francis, a basilica in Assisi that hosts famous frescoes depicting the saint's life, and one of the habits said to have belonged to the saint. A second robe is held at the Sanctuary of La Verna near Arezzo in Tuscany; a third at the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Florence; and a fourth at the Basilica of Cortona near Arezzo.

A branch of the Franciscan order in Tuscany, which rules only the churches in Florence and Cortona (different parts of the Franciscan order oversee the other two), were keen to see whether the two robes they held were real. They were particularly interested in the one at Cortona, said to have been brought there by Brother Elia Bombarone, the saint's first successor. In 2003, on the 750th anniversary of Brother Elia's death, the monks started to seek evidence to support the story of Brother Elia's role.

So the order asked Italian nuclear scientists to check up on the habits. "The request came directly from the Franciscan order," says Pier Andrea Mandò of the Italian National Institute of Nuclear Physics in Florence. He and his team took a few tiny samples from the robes and used a standard technique known as accelerator mass spectrometry (AMS) to measure the amount of isotope carbon-14 in the cloth.

A good date

The result, presented this week at the European Conference on Accelerators in Applied Research and Technology in Florence, shows that the robe kept in the Basilica of the Holy Cross is 100 years too young to have belonged to St Francis. But the one held in the Basilica of Cortona dates to between 1155 AD and 1225 AD, roughly contemporary with the saint.

This robe is kept together with a mortuary pillow and a Gospel Book, which are also attributed to St Francis. Carbon dating of the pillow shows that it is also contemporary with the saint's life. Palaeographic experts at the University of Siena say that the handwriting in the Gospel Book is in the same style used during the saint's period.

The Franciscan order says they are happy that the results seem to confirm Brother Elia's acts. Father Padre Antonio Di Marcantonio, leader of the Tuscan order, says he is not deeply concerned by the results of the first robe; its white cord belt turns out to be contemporary with St Francis, according to the physicists' work, so the power of the Florence relic is still intact, he says.

Hostile debate

Investigations of relics are not unusual in Europe, although they can give rise to much controversy. "Many relics have been recognised as fake, such as the arm of St Anthony of Padua, which turned out to be a stag's penis on examination," says Antonio Lombatti, a researcher of medieval church history at the National History Institute in Parma, Italy.

Particularly hostile debates between scientists and men of faith followed the 1988 radiocarbon dating of the Shroud of Turin — a linen cloth bearing the image of a man that many think is the imprint of Jesus. The research dated it at least from 1260 AD. (See column 'To know a veil').

Lombatti says that more modern techniques could help to confirm this late date. "But the Church has more or less closed its doors to science on the shroud and many other relics," he says.

Mandò says that he has no interest in re-dating the shroud. "There are too many religious and political implications," he says.

Visit our newsblog to read and post comments about this story.



Story from [email protected]:
http://news.nature.com//news/2007/070903/070903-7.html

 

[ramonmercado]

Relic to spend two weeks in Ireland on first visit
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ire ... 19172.html
PATSY McGARRY Religious Affairs Correspondent

Sat, Jul 10, 2010

THE MOST precious relic of the Order of St Camillus, the heart of its founder, arrived in Dublin yesterday at the beginning of a visit to Ireland which will last more than two weeks. It has been organised to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the order’s arrival in Ireland.

This is just the third time the relic has left Rome since the saint died on July 14th (his feast day) 1614 and is its first visit to Ireland.

Camillus, after a dissolute youth, converted to religious life and set up the order in 1591 with a mission to care for the sick even at the risk to one’s own life. He was canonised in 1746 and is known as patron saint of the sick and those who care for them.

The founder of its Irish province, Fr Terence O’Rourke from Blackrock in Dublin, came back to Ireland from France in 1935 with a small number of Irish Camillians who were then members of the French province. He set up what was to become the mother house at Killucan, Co Westmeath, where there is a nursing centre.

After the second World War the order spread to England and the Anglo Irish province was set up.

The order has three communities in Ireland – at Killucan, Co Westmeath, and at Booterstown and St Vincent Street north in Dublin.

It also has chaplains at the Mater hospital, the Connolly Hospital in Blanchardstown, and at St Luke’s in Rathgar.

The order is to be found in 33 countries worldwide, with its largest number in Africa and Asia. There are 21 members in the Anglo Irish province, 16 of those in its Irish section.

The relic was accompanied from Rome yesterday by Fr Stephen Foster, provincial of the Anglo Irish province. Hailing from Newcastle upon Tyne, he has been in Ireland 11 years, three of those as provincial. He joined the order after seeing an ad in the Universe Catholic newspaper.

He believes St Camillus “is an inspiring figure. He turned his life around and see what happened!”

He recalled that two stewardesses on the flight from Rome said that accompanying the relic was really emotional. “It’s really emotional for us as well,” he said.

The relic was taken under Garda escort to Killucan yesterday where it will remain until Thursday next. Then it will be brought to Dublin’s Mater hospital. Full details of the visit are at www.orderofstcamillus.ie

 

[ramonmercado]

Claimed Baptist relics on display
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 35249.html

SOFIA – Bulgaria’s main Orthodox cathedral yesterday displayed jaw and arm bones and a tooth said to be relics of John the Baptist in a move that state officials hope will boost tourism to the Black Sea resort where they were found.

Prominent politicians and some of the faithful flocked to the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Sofia to view the remains, found near the town of Sozopol in July.

John the Baptist is revered in Christianity and Islam. The Gospels say King Herod had John beheaded at the request of his stepdaughter Salomé after she danced for him.

“About 150,000 people have visited Sozopol since the relics were found,” minister without portfolio Bozhidar Dimitrov said.

– (Reuters)

 

[ramonmercado]

Relic of Virgin Mary causes Moscow's worst traffic jams in years
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/wor ... 33709.html
SEAMUS MARTIN in Moscow

Wed, Nov 30, 2011

Twenty years ago there was no possibility of a Christian relic going on public display in this city

THE BLOOD pressure of Moscow’s motorists has dropped to almost safe levels now that the Belt of the Virgin Mary has left town for its home in the Greek monastic complex of Mount Athos. Hundreds of thousands of pilgrims had been queuing for weeks to see the relic, understood to be an item of apparel of the Blessed Virgin, and believed to cure barrenness and disorders of women’s health.

The results of the miles-long queues and the bussing in of pilgrims from regional towns and cities has been a series of mammoth traffic jams, the likes of which have not been seen since the arrival of the head of Saint Panteleimon the Healer 11 years ago. The multitudes queued to kiss the ornate box in which the relic is held, but even a glimpse of the reliquary, it is believed, can affect whatever cure the respective believers request.

More than one million turned up in St Petersburg where the Belt was displayed earlier this month, and in Moscow, more than three times the size of St Petersburg’s trifling 4.5 million population, the attendances have been in proportion. Things have changed.

When I came to live and work in Moscow for this newspaper 20 years ago not only was there not the slightest possibility of a Christian relic being put on display, there was no Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in which to display it. Built to commemorate Imperial Russia’s victory over Napoleon, it was not an architectural gem. That was not the reason, however, why former divinity student Josef Stalin had it razed to the ground and replaced by a vast open-air heated swimming pool.

After the Soviet Union fell, Moscow’s mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, launched the city into a massive building boom. His wife, incidentally, owned a construction company and became the richest woman in Russia. A kind woman, she looked after her husband well and one of the city’s most dramatic projects was the reconstruction of the huge cathedral on its original site, smack in the city centre.

For the exposition of the holy relic the buses and the metro disgorged their pilgrims at points where marshals divided them into blocks of 50 or so and the long queues, up to 24 hours on some days, began.

In today’s Russia where the spirit of egalitarianism is long since dead, people of middling importance were given special tickets which allowed them to skip the queues and claim their cures ahead of the common herd.

One of the minority of men to have viewed the reliquary has been Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin, whose political party, United Russia, expects to retain its majority in the Duma in the general election of December 4th. Being pictured in veneration at the cathedral will not have done his party any harm.

For Mr Putin and his political adjunct, President Dmitry Medvedev, the traffic snarls have been of little consequence.They can use the middle lane on wide Kutuzovsky Prospekt which has been reserved for political leaders to speed to and from the Kremlin and Moscow White House and their stately state residences in the west of the city. That is one of the Soviet political privileges that has survived all the dramatic changes that occurred since the red flag came down from the Kremlin in December 1991.

Other gatherings in Moscow in this final week before the parliamentary elections were tiny in comparison. One called by the opposition A Just Russia party, to protest at the widespread belief that the vote would be rigged, mustered less than 300 people. There was a biblical aspect here too, for Mr Putin in a fierce election speech pointed the finger at A Just Russia and others as the modern-day equivalent of Judas Iscariot, out to betray their country for Western money.

 

[Waymarker]

I'm the proud possessor of Pontius Pilate's genuine original Roman helmet which I picked up in an antiques shop.
It's old and battered, and most of the paint has worn off over the centuries but i can just make out a few faded letters on the front-
D-LL-S C-WB-YS

 

[Recycled1]

Are you sure it's not a fake?

 

[Waymarker]

Are you sure it's not a fake?

The helmet is almost certainly genuine mate, the old Jewish antique shop proprietor told me he can trace his ancestry back to one of the Jewish priests who used to play squash with Pilate and won the helmet from him, and it became a family heirloom down the generations.
Incidentally I'm also the proud owner of the original Ark of the Covenant which i bought from the guy, there's a faded inscription on the back-
D-SC-NN-CT__FR-M__ M--NS__S-PPLY__B-F-R-__R-M-V-NG__B-CK__C-V-R.
I might ask a team of scholars at the British Museum to try deciphering it for me.

 

[ramonmercado]

Hundreds queue outside Holy Trinity Church in Cork to venerate relics of St Anthony
http://www.rte.ie/news/2013/1020/481541 ... ony-relic/
Updated: 20:57, Sunday, 20 October 2013

ArticleVideo (1)

The relics are at Holy Trinity Church in Cork The relics are at Holy Trinity Church in Cork

St Anthony relics received by bishop in Cork

Hundreds of people queued in the rain outside Holy Trinity Church in Cork to venerate the relics of St Anthony, one of the most popular saints in the Catholic Church.

The relics - a small piece of bone from the Saint's rib and a layer of St Anthony's cheek skin - are being brought to six venues around Ireland.
Earlier this morning, Bishop of Cork and Cloyne Dr John Buckley received the gold reliquary containing the relics at the entrance to the church.
St Anthony was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1195.

He is the patron saint of lost and stolen articles and was a powerful Franciscan preacher and teacher.

Mass at 12.30pm will be followed by veneration until 8.30pm.

The relics will be brought to Limerick tomorrow, then Galway on Tuesday and on Wednesday they will return to Dublin to St Mary's of the Angels on Church Street.

 

[Mythopoeika]

They can have my holy nail clippings and nostril hairs...

 

[ramonmercado]

They can have my holy nail clippings and nostril hairs...

I will testify that you cured pork.

 

[ramonmercado]

Vatican publicly unveils St Peter’s bone fragments
Monday, November 25, 2013
http://www.irishexaminer.com/world/vati ... 50637.html

The Vatican publicly unveiled a handful of bone fragments purportedly belonging to St Peter, reviving the scientific debate and tantalising mystery over whether the relics found in a shoe box truly belong to the first pope.

Pope Francis with relics of St Peter the apostle

By Nicole Winfield Vatican City

The nine pieces of bone sat nestled like rings in a jewel box inside a bronze display case on the side of the altar during a Mass commemorating the end of the Vatican’s year-long celebration of the Christian faith. It was the first time they had ever been exhibited in public.

Pope Francis prayed before the fragments at the start of the service and then clutched the case in his arms for several minutes after his homily.

No pope has ever definitively declared the fragments to belong to the apostle, Peter, but Pope Paul VI in 1968 said fragments found in the necropolis under St Peter’s Basilica were “identified in a way that we can consider convincing”.

Some archaeologists dispute the finding. But last week, a top Vatican official, Archbishop Rino Fisichella, said it almost doesn’t matter if archaeologists one day definitively determine that the bones aren’t Peter’s, saying Christians have prayed at Peter’s tomb for two millennia and will continue to, regardless.

“It’s not as if pilgrims who go to the altar (of Peter’s tomb) think that in that moment in which they profess their faith that below them are the relics of Peter, or of another or another still,” he told reporters. “They go there to profess the faith.”

The relics were discovered during excavations begun under St Peter’s Basilica in the years following the 1939 death of Pope Pius XI, who had asked to be buried in the grottoes where dozens of popes are buried, according to the 2012 book by veteran Vatican correspondent Bruno Bartoloni, The Ears of the Vatican.

During the excavations, archaeologists discovered a funerary monument with a casket built in honour of Peter and an engraving in Greek that read “Petros eni,” or “Peter is here.”

The scholar of Greek antiquities, Margherita Guarducci, who had deciphered the engraving continued to investigate and learned one of the basilica workers had been given the remains found inside the casket and stored them in a shoe box. She reported her findings to Paul VI who later proclaimed that there was a “convincing” argument that the bones belonged to Peter.

 

[krakenten]

Ah, yes, relics.....

Over the years, the very foreskin of Jesus, enough fragments of the True Cross to build a barn, a rusty lancehead(perhaps Roman, perhaps not) various bits of grotty old cloth, a big stack of bones and a bewildering assortment of this and that has been venerated.

And not one scintilla of proof presented that any of them are what they are noised about being.

So, how do they become venerated? From faith, pure faith. A holy hermit says this is the sacred lance that wounded Jesus, so, there it is. The Shroud of Turin becomes a precious thing, because people believed it was Christ's burial cloth.

Faith, in the end it all comes down to faith.