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Subiaco Abbey, in Subiaco, Arkansas, had its altar smashed with a hammer, and relics inside the altar stolen on Jan. 5, 2023. A suspect has been arrested and is set to be charged in connection with the attack. | Subiaco AbbeyBoston, Mass., Jan 6, 2023 / 13:51 pm The altar of an Arkansas Benedictine monastery was destroyed Thursday, and several relics of ancient saints were stolen. Subiaco Abbey in Subiaco, Arkansas, said in a press release that on Jan. 5, a man using “a regular hammer and sledgehammer/ax” began destroying the abbey’s marble altar by smashing it in different places....

It's unclear whether the relic — a piece of the "true cross" — was on board when the Moskva sank. The Russian Orthodox Church announced in February 2020 that the relic had been delivered to the then-commander of the Black Sea fleet, Vice Admiral Igor Osipov, and was at the fleet's headquarters in readiness for delivery to the ship "shortly," the state-run Tass news agency reported at the time. The Moskva had a chapel on board for sailors to pray in, Sergiy Khalyuta, archpriest of the Russian Orthodox Church's Sevastopol District, told Tass. He said the fragment was to be...

Not long after a museum opened on the former Nazi party rally grounds at Nuremberg, locals began turning up in sheepish dribs and drabs with Third Reich memorabilia that had been kept in their families for generations. Over time the collection grew to thousands of books, including numerous copies of Mein Kampf, and hundreds of knick-knacks and relics, ranging from Adolf Hitler action figures to SS dress daggers and a cast-iron eagle with a 10ft wingspan. Now the curators must work out what on earth to do with it all. The Documentation Centre, housed in the north wing of the...

istory is the account of vast social movements and cultural changes. To be sure, individuals play their part. But they are usually understood to be products of their times. The Reformation, though, whose five-hundredth anniversary we observe this year and whose impact on not only the church but the world has been monumental, was largely precipitated by one man: Martin Luther. Yes, vast social movements and cultural changes were at work in sixteenth-century Europe. But Luther caused many of them, such as the educational explosion that would lead to universal literacy, the rise of the middle class, and eventually democratic...

A giant star which was under the observation of astronomers for over ten years has suddenly vanished. The star in question was located in a dwarf galaxy 75 million light-years away, and was one of the largest stars in the known universe. The star, which was 2.5 times brighter than the Sun, left no trace behind The star was located in a very far off galaxy, making its detection and observation very difficult. The astronomers observed it based on its signature, which was picked up and then analysed, instead of a direct observation. A highly unstable blue star, researchers picked...

Today being Good Friday for Christians around the world, it is a fitting time to look at one of the most enigmatic and widely debated relics of history: The Shroud of Turin. While there have been no end of scientific attempts to determine what this fascinating image might be and how it was made, I find the historical attempts to trace its provenance to be more interesting. The earliest reference to a shroud associated with Jesus may be found in Sacred Scripture. In the Gospel of Saint John we find the following passage: "Then cometh Simon Peter, following him, and...

A pelvis bone said to belong to the fourth-century saint who inspired the story of Father Christmas could indeed be from the legend himself, scientists have said. Researchers at the University of Oxford radiocarbon tested the the bone said to be from St Nicholas, and found it dates from the correct historical period. While they cannot categorically prove they are from the Christian saint, the team said the results pinpoint the relic's age to the fourth century AD. This is the period widely believed to have been when St Nicholas died, around 343 AD.

Bones attributed to St. Peter have been found by chance in a church in Rome during routine restoration work, 2,000 years after the apostle’s death. The relics of the saint, who is regarded as the first Pope, were found in clay pots in the 1,000-year-old Church of Santa Maria in Cappella in the district of Trastevere, a medieval warren of cobbled lanes on the banks of the Tiber River. The bones were discovered when a worker lifted up a large marble slab near the medieval altar of the church, which has been closed to the public for 35 years because...

In the wake of Fox Searchlight’s highly anticipated release of The Birth of Nation, the incredible story of Nat Turner’s slave revolt — and the mystery surrounding his remains after death — stays in the minds of viewers long after they’ve seen the film. The new movie, overshadowed by controversy surrounding previous rape allegations against the film’s lead actor, chronicles the life of Rev. Nathaniel Turner, an enslaved Black man who led one of the bloodiest slave insurrections in American history. In 1831, Turner and a small army of his fellow Black brethren fought their way through Virginia’s Southampton County,...

George Washington University researcher has identified a 6,200-year-old indigo-blue fabric from Huaca, Peru, making it one of the oldest-known cotton textiles in the world and the oldest known textile decorated with indigo blue. Credit: Lauren Urana The discovery marks the earliest use of indigo as a dye, a technically challenging color to produce. According to Jeffrey Splitstoser, lead author of a paper on the discovery and assistant research professor of anthropology at the George Washington University, the finding speaks to the sophisticated textile technology ancient Andean people developed 6,200 years ago. "Some of the world's most significant technological achievements were...

Nizhny Novgorod, September 14, Interfax - A particle of St. Seraphim relics will be conveyed to the crew of the International Space Station. The ceremony will take place in St. Seraphim Diveyevo Monastery on September 16 in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, press service of the local diocese reports on Tuesday. The members of the crewed spacecraft Soyuz MS-02, which consists of Sergey Ryzhikov, Andrey Borisenko, Shane Kimbrough (NASA), will deliver the particle to the ISS. After the flight, the particle will be conveyed to the Transfiguration Cathedral in Zvezdny Gorodok, the Moscow Region. As was reported, Ryzhikov is going to...

When amateur archaeologist Dennis Fabricius Holm got off work early last Friday and decided to spend a couple of hours searching a little field in Funen with his metal detector, little did he know he was about to make history. Holm stumbled across one of the most extraordinary finds in recent times near the little town of Aunslev when he discovered a crucifix that dates back about 1,100 years – Denmark’s oldest crucifix ever found. It could rewrite Danish history. “It’s a completely sensational find that dates back to the first half of the 900s,” Malene Refshauge Beck, a curator...

Featured Term selected at random:RELIQUARY Any repository in which a relic is sealed and kept. Reliquaries vary in size, according to the relic, from very small ones that can be easily carried to larger caskets for whole parts of a saint's body. Relics are never exposed for public veneration unless enclosed in a reliquary. Some reliquaries are famous for their exquisite design and value. All items in this dictionary are from Fr. John Hardon's Modern Catholic Dictionary, © Eternal Life. Used with permission.

When a body is described as being incorrupt it means that it does not decay after death. The same cannot be said of a body that is well preserved or mummified, or has undergone an embalming process. Most such corpses become stiff, but incorruptible saints remain completely flexible, as if they are only sleeping.... There is a whole list of saints, however, whose bodies have been found to be incorrupt. Not all of them were Roman Catholics. The Russian Orthodox Church is well represented by such as St. Alexander of Svir, who was a monk, and by the martyrs of...

The Catholic belief of “incorruptibility” holds that if a body does not decay after death, the person is holy. It takes two miracles to become a saint; the Church once allowed a perfect corpse to count as one. Incorruptibility is no longer a miracle, however, perhaps because so many tried to help God along. Oil and herbs were inserted into the muscle cavities of some older popes, for instance. When Pope Pius XII died in 1958, the Vatican used a wrapping technique similar to what was believed to have been applied to Jesus. It failed miserably. Only days after his...

The Vatican is planning an unprecedented public display of the relics of St. Peter, as the Year of Faith comes to a close. The display was announced by Archbishop Rino Fisichella, the president of Pontifical Council for the New Evangelization, in an article appearing in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano. The archbishop did not supply any details of the plans. The tomb of St. Peter, located under the altar of the Vatican basilica, was unearthed during excavations in the mid-20the century. In 1968, after extensive research and testing, Pope Paul VI announced that relics of St. Peter had been...

Archaeologists digging around an ancient church in Turkey say they’ve made a startling discovery and unearthed a piece of the cross that used to crucify Jesus. The diggers found a stone chest this week and inside were several relics believed to be tied to the crucifixion. Among them was a piece of the actual cross upon which Jesus was nailed, one historian with Turkey’s Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts said in the Hurriyet Daily News.

Archeologists conducting excavations at the site of a church in Turkey have unearthed a stone chest containing a relic that may be part of the cross on which Jesus was crucified. The items were discovered during a large-scale excavation at the Balatlar Church, which was built in A.D. 660 near the Black Sea, Today's Zaman reported. Professor Gülgün Köroğlu, an associate professor at Turkey's Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and excavation leader, told the newspaper the artifacts are linked to Jesus' crucifixion.

Photo courtesy of Fr. Carlos Martins. Denver, Colo., Mar 29, 2012 / 04:14 am (CNA/EWTN News).- Father Carlos Martins never expected to be a priest, or to be touring North America to promote devotion to the saints through their sacred relics. For much of his life, he did not believe in God.“I was raised in a very nominally Catholic family. We didn't go to church,” the 37-year-old priest told CNA on March 27. “The Catholic school that we went to was 'Catholic' in name only.” “By the time I became an adult, aside from being a 'practical atheist,' I...

7 Most Incredible Tank Graveyards on Earth In certain corners of the globe you'll find the strangest of military cemeteries – places filled not with the bodies of fallen troops but littered with the carcasses of abandoned tanks. These once-formidable weapons of war no longer strike fear into the hearts of opposing forces; their days of rolling inexorably onwards on the teeth of steel tracks are over. Now, the armor of these behemoths is rusting and corroded, their hatches all but sealed from lack of use, and their controls never again to be manned by commanders in battle. WWII tank...