Word: relic
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...people will line up in the next eight weeks to view what has come to be known as the Shroud of Turin, on public display for the first time in 20 years. Seven hundred thousand have reserved their places. The Pope will arrive on May 24 to venerate the relic. Some of the pilgrims who precede and follow him will no doubt come out of idle curiosity. Some will come to view a historic conundrum. But the majority will make the pilgrimage to the Shroud of Turin in order to attain grace in the presence of clothing Jesus left behind...
When its moment arrives again, this Saturday, the venerable--and venerated--relic will be slipped out of the silver casket that has protected it for centuries, through fire and water, doubt and blind belief. Gingerly, fastidiously, overseen by Giovanni Cardinal Saldarini and a German textile conservation expert, it will be unspooled from around its wooden cylinder. After a top cloth has been pulled away--red taffeta, sewn by Princess Clotilde of Savoy in 1868--the fragile, scarred length of ancient linen will be smoothed into place in a metal-and-glass display case built precisely to its dimensions. The case...
...million visitors expected. The housewife will make the 90-mile drive from Milan with her husband Luca. They will bring along their two infant children. "Age doesn't make any difference for receiving grace," she notes. A few years ago, Trabattoni saw a videotape about the relic. The tape spent a few minutes on the results of the radiocarbon dating, mostly to disparage it. But what Trabattoni remembers is the details it pointed out in the cloth. "The wounds on the shoulders," she explains, "the wounds from the flogging, the wounds on the knees. And there was one thing...
...either trumped belief or become its new focus, a fascination with the shroud seems to have not only survived but also flourished. It can be tracked on the World Wide Web, from the official archdiocese site to the home page of the Turin fire brigade (which saved the relic during a fire last April). It can be discussed at the Centre International d'Etudes sur le Linceul de Turin in Paris, the Collegamento pro Sindone in Rome (sindon is the Latin word for shroud), Valencia's Centro Espanol de Sindonologia or with the members of variously titled organizations in England...
Beijing and Taiwan are always baring their fangs at each other, but usually over matters of war and diplomacy, not teeth. But Wednesday saw China's government furiously denying that Taiwan owns a prime relic: one of the teeth of the Buddha...