January 27, 2014 (Reuters) - Thieves broke into a small church in the mountains east of Rome over the weekend and stole a reliquary with the blood of the late Pope John Paul II, a custodian said on Monday.
Franca Corrieri said she had discovered a broken window early on Sunday morning and had called the police. When they entered the small stone church they found the gold reliquary and a crucifix missing.
John Paul, who died in 2005, loved the mountains in the Abruzzo region east of Rome. He would sometimes slip away from the Vatican secretly to hike or ski there and pray in the church.
Polish-born John Paul, who reigned for 27 years, is due to be made a saint of the Roman Catholic Church in May, meaning the relic will become more noteworthy and valuable.
In 2011, John Paul's former private secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, gave the local Abruzzo community some of the late pontiff's blood as a token of the love he had felt for the mountainous area.
It was put in a gold and glass circular case and kept in a niche of the small mountain church of San Pietro della Ienca, near the city of L'Aquila.
Corrieri told Reuters the incident felt more like a "kidnapping" than a theft. "In a sense, a person has been stolen," she said by telephone.
She said she could not say if the intention of the thieves may have been to seek a ransom for the blood.
Apart from the reliquary and a crucifix, nothing else was stolen from the isolated church, even though Corrieri said the thieves would probably have had time to take other objects during the night-time theft.
Some of John Paul's blood was saved after an assassination attempt that nearly killed him in St. Peter's Square on May 13, 1981.
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Okay, this is a queer story on at least three counts:
1) They kept some of his blood following the assassination attempt because ... well, you might want it later to give to churches.
2) They gave some of the blood to this church because ... well, someone had the foresight to have some blood on hand for such purposes. It is not stated but is implied that this is some of the assassination blood.
3) Someone stole the blood.
The canonization of JPII, according to other reports, is scheduled for April. There has been some opposition to the haste with which he was beatified and will be canonized, something made possible only because of his own somewhat political manipulation of the rules governing the process for declaring saints during his pontificate. He declared 1,340 blesseds and 483 saints, more than all the popes in the last five centuries combined. I was, by the way, present for one of his canonization celebrations.
Catholics pray that the deceased rest in peace. The relic trade (and it was once actually big business, although it is forbidden to sell relics today) guarantees that the saints rest not in peace but in pieces.--------------
The title to this post refers of one of the Brother Cadfael mysteries by Ellis Peters.It is about an attempt by visiting monks to steal the relics of St. Winifred from the Cadfael's home abbey of St. Peter in Shrewsbury. The relics make the abbey a major pilgrimage site, and thus a major source of revenue to the town and monastery. I will not spoil the story, but there is an irony to the plot that those who have read the earlier Cadfael tales will understand immediately.
I am a big fan of Brother Cadfael. His exploits in part inspired me to write my John of the Cross mystery novel. I was also present for a canonization by JPII in 1998. That was the controversial canonization of Edith Stein, AKA St. Teresa Benedicta. I was still in the monastery at the time. Oddly enough, Tom, my partner, is related to Edith Stein through his mother's family.
ReplyDeleteBro Cadfael is one of the few murder mystery series I read in its entirety.
ReplyDeleteI love the PBS version with Mr. Jacobi.