Saints at Saint Patrick's

Saints at St. Patrick's

In a solemn three-hour ceremonial, a tiny reliquary ( 1/2 by 1 1/2 by 2 1/2 in.) was sealed into the new high altar of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Manhattan last Saturday. In the reliquary were bone fragments of each of the twelve Apostles, of St. Patrick, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Rose of Lima (the first American saint) and three Jesuit saints martyred by the Iroquois in 1649. They came straight from Rome, where a special department of the Vatican authenticates relics of the saints and sends them with proper attestation wherever new altars are needed.

Relics are divided into three classes&#first-class relics are parts of the saint's body; second class, clothing which the saint wore; third class, anything the saint used or touched. No Roman Catholic altar--not even a portable altar can be consecrated unless it contains at least one piece of the body of a martyred saint. For this purpose a first-class relic of even St. Francis of Assisi would not suffice, since he was not put to death for his faith. This rule points back to the days of the early persecutions, when the Christians celebrated Mass in the catacombs at graves of their martyred brethren.

Another New York church received a major relic last week when Archbishop Francis J. Spellman presented to the parish church of St. Helena in The Bronx a piece of the True Cross miraculously discovered on Calvary on May 3, A.D. 326, by St. Helena, mother of Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor of Rome. Said the Archbishop: "This . ... relic of the True Cross [is] one of the largest pieces outside St. Peter's in Rome and the Church of St. John of the Cross in Jerusalem. It was verified as a true relic 126 years ago in Rome."

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