Posted on 08/22/2011 5:17:43 PM PDT by STARWISE
Police in a small Tennessee town have salvaged a rare painting of supposedly the true face of Jesus from a thief who was trying to sell it to a church.
The 150-year-old painting, a Catholic relic based on the “Veil of Veronica,” had been stolen and dumped in a closet for years by a thief, identified as Kelly Ghormley, before she approached a church in Madisonville to sell it, Daily Mail reported Friday.
According to legend, when a follower named Veronica from Jerusalem encountered Jesus on the way to Calvary and wiped sweat off His face with her veil, Christ’s image was imprinted on the cloth.
The artifact the police recovered from Ghormley is one of the very few paintings which were based on the image of Christ as it supposedly appeared on Veronica’s veil. It remains a mystery how the rare painting, which had even been blessed by Pope Leo XIII, landed in Tennessee.
According to volunteertv.com, the painting was owned by a 73-year-old man who got it as a gift 20 years ago. “Ha ha, I’ve lived here for 17 years. It’s been in there... or in my bedroom ever since,” the man, identified only as Frosty, was quoted as saying.
Three years later Ghormley broke into Frosty’s motor home, stole the painting, put it in a cloth bank bag, and then threw it in a closet. Recently, she tried to sell it to Saint Joseph the Worker Church in Madisonville.
But the church realized the significance of the painting and alerted police who then arrested Ghormley, Daily Mail said.
Interestingly, Frosty had no idea that it was so valuable, but he says that he will keep, rather than sell it, according to Huffington Post.
Some believe Veronica later traveled to Rome to present the cloth to the Roman Emperor Tiberius.
The event of Veronica’s encounter with Jesus is commemorated as the sixth Station of the Cross. It is believed that the veil possesses miraculous properties, being able to quench thirst, cure blindness, and sometimes even raise the dead.
Excerpt:
Moses,73, says he got the painting as a young man more than half a century ago. "From a 99 year old man in Florida," Moses said as he told us the story.
He says the man was a friend. Neither one of them had any idea how valuable it was. We asked what he did with it all these years.
"I kept it with me," Moses said.
Moses says he's been given various estimates on what the painting is worth, some telling him it's worth a couple million, others even more.
"She says it won't surprise me if it goes to a billion dollars," said Moses about one person advising him on the matter.
Some of his hesitation comes from him knowing that the picture has power, like one instance where he believes it saved the life of a man he knew.
"He said 'Frosty, I believe if I had not held that painting that night, I would have been dead' that flipped my mind," explained Frosty as he told us that man's experience with holding the painting.
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Amazing.
.. Ping!
Incredible.
Interesting approach: attempting to sell stolen property to a church. What were you thinking, Kelly?
Yup, looks just like the photograph I have of him.
Does it have an autograph to go with it?
Make sure you get the certificate of authenticity with it.
The Franklin Mint guaranteed it to be limited issue.
MEMOIRS OF EXTRAORDINARY POPULAR DELUSIONS AND THE Madness of Crowds.
Relics:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/dvii.html#relics
Interesting. I wonder how it got here, WW2?
This isn’t a Gods, Graves, Glyphs topic, and I didn’t add it to the keyword.
I agree .. and I sure didn’t.
Mods: please consider for removal of the referenced keyword added by ‘someone.’
“This isn’t a Gods, Graves, Glyphs topic”
Thank you.
And thank you, SCiv.
Thanks STARWISE.
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