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Remains of what some believe were the crown of thorns and a splinter from the cross used in Jesus Christ's crucifixion will be in Southern Arizona next month as part of a touring exhibit of Catholic artifacts called "Relics of the Passion." "We are expecting a lot of people. Catholics in Arizona are very devout, and in our troubled times right now people are really looking to get into the deep roots of their faith and to recapture a sense of hope," said John Garcia, public relations director for the Arizona Knights of Columbus. The lay Catholic group and the...

Ecumenical patriarch to travel to Vatican to retrieve holy relics ISTANBUL, Turkey The spiritual leader of the world's Orthodox Christians will travel to Rome next month on a historic mission to the Vatican. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew the First will retrieve the relics of two saints seized by Crusaders 800 years ago. Orthodox Church officials see the move as a historic step toward reconciliation between the two churches.

Ancient Relics Discovered at Kaesong Industrial ComplexThousands of historical remains such as figures of bull images were found at the Kaesong Industrial Complex. Korea Land Corporation has conducted a joint excavation with North Korea since last June in 12 areas of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in which relics were distributed, and discovered a huge amount of historical remains from the Old Stone Age to the Chosun (Joseon) Dynasty. Iron figure bull image found at Gaesong Industrial Complex./Yonhap The figures of bull images were found where a Koryo Dynasty building had been, and were probably buried during construction as part of...

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (CNS) -- The wide publicity and controversy surrounding Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" have brought a spike of new interest in the Shroud of Turin, which many believe was Jesus' burial cloth. John P. and Rebecca S. Jackson, who run the Turin Shroud Center of Colorado in Colorado Springs, and Barrie Schwortz, who runs the interactive Web site www.shroud.com, reported a significant increase in calls or visits since the movie came out. "This is normally a busy time of the year for us, but there's been about a 40 percent increase" in phone calls, said...

'THE PASSION' UNLEASHEDRelics of crucifixion coming to U.S. cities Washington, St. Louis to see pieces of cross and other artifacts Posted: March 19, 20041:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Venerated relics of Christ's Passion – from pieces of the cross, to replicas of the nails believed to have been used 2000 years ago to crucify Jesus – will be put on rare public display next month during Easter. The relics will be shown at the Cathedral in St. Louis on Palm Sunday, April 4, and at the John Paul II Cultural Center in Washington, D.C., from April 4-18. "As the recent success...

In the period of the persecution of the faithful in Russia, many refugees tried to preserve from desecration, destruction and mockery all that was sacred to the Russian heart. Every icon, every thread, every clump of earth connected with a holy site, with a saint, was considered a sacred item. And in the diaspora, the Lord showed His mercy and grace through the appearance of new miracle-working icons, new saints and new holy objects. All this is preserved as sacred in the monasteries and churches of the Russian Diaspora. Almost evey church contains special icons, relics and objects--they are countless....

Archaeologist: Jewish Relics Endangered By PETER ENAV Associated Press Writer February 3, 2004, 6:43 AM EST JERUSALEM -- An Israeli archaeologist charged that Muslim authorities are excavating a disputed holy site in Jerusalem in a way that endangers what she says may be remains of the biblical Jewish Temples. The charges were denied Tuesday by the Islamic Trust, or Waqf, which administers the holy site. "This is about politics and nothing else because of the sensitivity of Jerusalem," said Waqf director Adnan Al-Husseini. Israel's Antiquities Authority declined comment on the archaeologist's claims. The sacred hilltop in the Old City of...

Friday, Jan. 16, 2004. Relics of Ancient Burial Rites Reveal Siberian Trade Route By Charles Q. Choi New York Times Service YEKATERINBURG, Russia -- In a medieval Siberian graveyard a few miles south of the Arctic Circle, Russian scientists have unearthed mummies roughly 1,000 years old, clad in copper masks, hoops and plates -- burial rites that archaeologists say they have never seen before. Among 34 shallow graves were five mummies shrouded in copper and blankets of reindeer, beaver, wolverine or bear fur. Unlike the remains of Egyptian pharaohs, the scientists say, the Siberian bodies were mummified by accident. The...

AMMAN, Jordan, Nov 16, 2003 (United Press International via COMTEX) -- Jordanian authorities have confiscated around 500 smuggled Iraqi artifacts that date back thousands of years, media reports said Sunday. Mahmoud Qtaisaht, head of the antiquities department, was quoted as saying that among the objects confiscated were 200 original relics and 300 pieces of various historic artwork and documents. He said they date back 3,000 to 10,000 years. Some more items are of recent origin, about 150 years old. The official said that many of the smuggling operations were carried out by Iraqis and "other foreign nationals." He said the...

Exotic relics found in ancient nomads' tombs in Inner Mongolia www.chinaview.cn 2003-10-28 17:13:28 ¡¡¡¡HOHHOT, Oct. 28 (Xinhuanet) -- Judging from bronze articles unearthed from ancient tombs in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, archaeologists estimate that nomadic tribes in north China had contacts with Western civilizations approximately 2,500 years ago.¡¡¡¡Local archaeologists found a bronze mirror and a bronze plate at the two ancient tomb sites in Liangcheng county which can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 B.C.) and the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.), which they believed could not be the work of ancient northern peoples in...

A little-known reform under Vatican II (1962-65) was to end the centuries-old requirement that every newly consecrated Roman Catholic church encase within its altar the relics of saint. For the previous 1,500 years, the bones of the saints and martyrs had travelled far and wide, mapping the spread of Christianity.

BAGHDAD, June 8 -- The world was appalled. One archaeologist described the looting of Iraq's National Museum of Antiquities as "a rape of civilization." Iraqi scholars standing in the sacked galleries of the exhibit halls in April wept on camera as they stood on shards of cuneiform tablets dating back thousands of years. In the first days after Baghdad fell to U.S. forces, condemnation rained down on U.S. military commanders and officials in Washington for failing to stop the pillage of priceless art, while tanks stood guard at the Ministry of Oil. It was as if the coalition forces had...

The Times Reaps What It Sowed 2 by Mia T, May 11, 2003   "It's a huge black eye," said Arthur Sulzberger Jr., chairman of The New York Times Company and publisher of the newspaper, whose family has owned a controlling interest in The Times for 107 years. "It's an abrogation of the trust between the newspaper and its readers." … The Deception Reporting Process Riddled With Lies… There was no inkling, Mr. Raines said, that the newspaper was dealing with "a pathological pattern of misrepresentation, fabricating and deceiving." … But Mr. Sulzberger emphasized that as The New York Times...

    Democratic Party's Problem Transcends Its Anti-War Contingent Mia T, 5.5.03   hyperlinked images of shamecopyright Mia T 2003. by Mia T, 4.6.03   If Act I was a thinly veiled allegory about naked clintonism, then Act II is a parable about the plan for world domination by the Establishment, aged hippies in pinstripes all, with their infantile, solipsistic world view amazingly untouched by time.   Mia T, THE ALIENS   Al From is sounding the alarm. "Unless we convince Americans that Democrats are strong on national security," he warns his party, "Democrats will continue to lose elections."...

    THE "DEBATE"Democratic Party's Problem Transcends Its Anti-War Contingent Mia T, 5.5.03 Nine Democratic presidential candidates battled tonight over the war in Iraq and over how to provide health care insurance for all Americans, in a debate that highlighted deep fissures in the party that several candidates warned could endanger its chances of winning back the White House. It was the first time these candidates have met in debate, and it almost instantly turned into a squabble that revealed strong -- and in one case apparently personal -- differences in this crowded field, on national security and domestic policy....

Workers find Civil War-era shell in Charleston Bomb squad destroys ordnance discovered near Adgers Wharf BY GLENN SMITH Of The Post and Courier Staff The Charleston police bomb squad rushed to Longitude Lane near Adgers Wharf after construction workers reported Monday morning finding a Civil War-era artillery shell that appeared to be live. Workers actually unearthed the round Friday while tearing up a cobblestone driveway along the narrow lane in downtown Charleston, but they didn't know what it was, said Sgt. Karl Smith, bomb squad commander. They called police Monday after a Civil War re-enactor recognized the corroded shell and...

FIGURATIVE DROOL Mia T , 11-05-02 MINNESOTANS WORRIED about an anthrax attack at the Mall of America can relax. Walter Mondale is on the case. "Don't worry about me and terrorism," he declared in the Minnesota Senate debate Monday morning. "I'm opposed to it. Well, He Didn't Drool . . . Walter Mondale stumbles through his Monday morning "conversation" / The Daily Standard | 11-4-02 | by Stephen F. Hayes Perhaps Mondale didn't drool, literally, but the stuff that spewed forth--non sequiturs, petitio principii, imagined laurels, ideological black holes, time warps, warped priorities-- was drivel nonetheless. It was downright...

7,000-year-old relics unearthed in NW China Story Filed: Monday, October 14, 2002 10:22 PM EST XI'AN, Oct 15, 2002 (Xinhua via COMTEX) -- About 300 pieces of pottery, jade and bone utensil relics have been unearthed in northwest China's Shaanxi Province. Ash pits and ruins of houses and tombs dating from 7,000 to 600 years ago were dug up by Chinese archaeologists in an area covering over 2,500 sq meters of Shaanxi's Baoji County. More than 100 pottery utensils unearthed were complete or restorable, according to the archaeologists. Most of the Neolithic pottery, including bowls, cups, pots and vases, are...

Buried relics uncovered at Angkor Wat. Japanese archaeologists have made a rare underground find of relics at the temples of the Angkor Wat complex in Cambodia. The archaeology team comes from from Sophia University, a Jesuit school in Tokyo. It dug up 103 pieces of Buddhist statues in mid-March, at Banteay Kdei temple, one of the dozens of temples built near the northern Cambodian town of Siem Reap between the 9th and 14th centuries. The pieces likely date back to the Angkorian period from the reign of Jayavarman VII, who ruled at the end of the 12th century. Cambodian...