Rolfe posited that if the shroud is the handiwork of "a medieval conman" as the Museum suggests, then their experts should be able to accomplish a similar feat in 2022. Read more

Bones believed to belong to the martyred saints are enshrined at the basilica, and each encasing bears the name of the saint.

But now archaeologists say skeletal fragments enshrined at the church are too recent to have come from the time of Jesus Christ.

Using radiocarbon dating, a team of researchers from the Netherlands, Denmark, Italy and the UK determined a femur purportedly belonging to St. James dates to between 214 and 340 AD.

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The relics were found under the floor in clay pots in the 1,000-year-old Church of Santa Maria in Cappella in the district of Trastevere. Read more

"The thing is, people don't have much to hope for ... they have nothing else to rely on, other than to go and pray," says Xenia Loutchenko, a Moscow-based commentator on church affairs. Read more

This ground-breaking centre, based in Keble College's Advanced Studies Centre, is to be composed of computer and medical scientists as well as historians, classicists and theologians.

Such an interdisciplinary approach builds upon work that has been undertaken by the university's archaeological school since the 1980s.

Past achievements within the university have included the dating of the shroud of Turin, which involved study in three laboratories and the radiocarbon accelerator unit.

This new unit is the first time that such a wide-ranging field of experts has been brought together in this way.

The use of relics in Christian worship is ancient but for some it represents the worst excesses of superstition.

Here are some of the more unusual, quirky and controversial relics.

The head of St Catherine of Siena - San Domenico Basilica Siena, Italy

St Catherine of Siena lived a pious life after experiencing a vision of Jesus at the age of seven.

Her parents had arranged her marriage to a local man. In order to resist this attempt and preserve her virginity, she cut off her hair and scalded her head with hot water.

She died in Rome in 1380 and the people of Siena asked for her body to be returned home but were refused. Some of her devotees secretly dug up her body and severed her head, placing it in a bag.

There is a legend that when the roman guard apprehended those who had taken the head, all that was found in the bag were rose petals.

When they finally arrived in Siena the rose petals had miraculously turned back into St Catherine's head.

Today St Catherine's head can be seen alongside her thumb and attracts large number of pilgrims each year. Her body remains in Rome and her foot is claimed to be in a reliquary in Venice. Continue reading

Sources

• Catholic Herald, from an article by Fr Matthew Pittam, a priest of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.
• Image: Catholic Saints Blogspot

Even the most suspect claim of a "lost" gospel or an "explosive" archaeological find that purports to shed light on the man from Galilee can generate a media frenzy, and gives believers — or skeptics — fresh evidence to try to finally win their argument while leaving their foes on the defensive.

Think of the recent "gospel" that seemed to show Jesus had a wife — and she was, of all people, the scandalous Mary Magdalene.

Or the discovery a few years ago of an ancient papyrus that depicted Judas as the hero of the gospel story, not the great betrayer.

Or, a few years before that, the revelation of a bone box with "brother of Jesus" inscribed on the top.

The argument in these purported blockbuster discoveries is that everything we've ever known about Christianity is probably false and that there has been a massive, millennia-long cover-up to hide the real truth.

Remember "The Da Vinci Code"? There's a reason that fiction sounded like fact to a lot of people.

Yet in spite of the overblown claims and dodgy artifacts floating around out there, genuine artifacts and solid historical research still provide the best window into that long-ago world and the best chance to figure out who Jesus really was, and what he meant.

That's also the idea behind CNN's "Finding Jesus: Faith. Fact. Forgery," a new, six-part series that we created (and book of the same name that we co-authored).

"Finding Jesus" premieres this Sunday (March 1) on CNN and runs weekly through Easter Sunday, with each episode examining many of the very objects that have so often made for eye-popping headlines:

The Shroud of Turin (March 1); the bones of John the Baptist (March 8); the gospel of Judas (March 15); James, the brother of Jesus (March 22); the True Cross (March 29); and the gospel of Mary Magdalene (April 5).

Why focus on scraps of papyrus and splinters of wood, bone fragments and bits of ancient linen? Continue reading

• David Gibson and Michael McKinley in Huff Post Religion

David Gibson, a national reporter for Religion News Service, and author and filmmaker Michael McKinley are co-authors of the new book "Finding Jesus".

In a September 3 communiqué, the Diocese of Peoria, where Archbishop Sheen was born, announced that the cause was suspended "for the foreseeable future" and would be assigned to a Vatican archive.

This is because the Archdiocese of New York had refused to release the archbishop's remains and to allow the body to be transferred to Peoria for the process of official inspection and to take relics.

Peoria diocese said in a communiqué that the Holy See expected the remains to be moved to Peoria in Illinois.

Archbishop Sheen's last will and testament expressed a desire for burial in New York.

He accepted Cardinal Terence Cooke's invitation for interment in the crypt beneath the main altar of St Patrick's Cathedral.

Bishop Daniel Jenky of Peoria, the President of the Archbishop Fulton J Sheen Foundation, who had taken charge of the cause, was said to be "heartbroken" at the refusal.

The Peoria communiqué stated Bishop Jenky was assured on several occasions by the Archdiocese of New York that the transfer of the body would take place at the appropriate time.

"New York's change of mind took place as the work on behalf of the cause had reached a significant stage," the communiqué added.

New York's undertaking to help move the body at an appropriate time was given by Cardinal Edward Egan twice, a Peoria spokesperson said in an update.

The Congregation for Saint's Causes advised in 2005 that moving the body should wait for an appropriate time, as the diocesan inquiry had not started.

But Peoria believes that with this inquiry now complete, now is the right time.

A date for beatification could have been as early as next year, the Peoria statement added, as the process only awaited a vote of cardinals and the approval of the Holy Father.

New York archdiocese responded that Cardinal Timothy Dolan "did express a hesitance in exhuming the body" without a directive from the Vatican Congregation for Saints' Causes and the approval of Archbishop Sheen's family.

The statement added that Archbishop Sheen's "closest surviving family members" asked that the archbishop's interment wishes be respected.

The statement noted that Cardinal Dolan "does object to the dismemberment of the archbishop's body" [for relics], but, were it to be exhumed, relics that might have been buried with Archbishop Sheen might be able to be taken.

If Peoria's decision is final, New York suggested it could take over the cause.

Peoria had previously suspended the cause process, for similar reasons, in 2010.

Sources

• The Tablet
• Catholic Review
• National Catholic Register
• Catholic Post (Peoria statement)
• Catholic News Agency
• Image: Irish Catholic

But for Bishop of Papua New Guinea's Kimbe province Capuchin Bill Fey such events are not especially unusual.

"On that instance, I was part of a procession carrying a relic of Blessed Peter To Rot, martyred by the Japanese during World War Two for opposing their planned legalisation of polygamy," he said.

"We were carrying the relic throughout parishes in my diocese which is on the western side of the island of New Britain.

"The occasion was the one hundredth anniversary of his birth.

"The tradition in the villages is that important people have to step over a pig which is then speared to death to make a welcoming banquet for the guest.

"So the relic of Blessed Peter was lifted over the waiting pig."

Bishop Fey wanted to diffuse any tendency to superstition that the arrival of the saint's relic might create.

"So I would joke that this guy's a hundred years old but can still jump over pigs," he said with his typical quiet chuckle. Continue reading.

Source: Catholic Leader

Image: Catholic Leader

Pope Francis prayed before the bones, which were revealed in a bronze case near the alter at a mass celebrating the end of the Year of Faith in St. Peter's Square, the Associated Press reports.

The remains were discovered in a monument unearthed during an excavation of St. Peter's Basilica after the death Pope Pius XI in 1939.

The relics have long been a source of debate, with some archeologists and theologians vehemently denying their legitimacy.

No pope has definitively declared that the fragments belong to the Apostle Peter, but Pope Paul VI in 1968 said fragments found in the necropolis under St. Peter's Basilica were "identified in a way that we can consider convincing." Some archaeologists dispute the finding.

The relics were discovered during excavations begun under St. Peter's Basilica in the years after the 1939 death of Pope Pius XI, according to the 2012 book by veteran Vatican correspondent Bruno Bartoloni, "The Ears of the Vatican."

Sources

AP/The Guardian
The Washington Post
Time
Image: Getty Images/The Washington Post

It is the first time in history, the bones, believed to be those of first Bishop of Rome's bones will leave the Vatican Grotto and be on display for public veneration.

Archbishop Rino Fisichella, president for the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of the New Evangelization, made the announcement in an editorial published in the Vatican's official newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, however exact details are not yet clear.

The bones were discovered during excavations of the necropolis under St Peter's Basilica in the 1940s near a monument erected in the fourth century to honour St. Peter.

No pope has ever declared the bones to be authentic.

Scientific tests were conducted on the bones in the 1950s and '60s, and Pope Paul VI said in 1968 that the "relics" of St. Peter had been "identified in a way which we can hold to be convincing."

The Year of Faith concludes on November 24, Feast of Christ the King.

Sources

• Rome Reports
• CNS
• Image: Flickr

The skeleton, he learned, was one of many the "catacomb saints," once-revered holy objects regarded by 16th- and 17th-century Catholics as local protectors and personifications of the glory of the afterlife. Some of them still remain tucked away in certain churches, while others have been swept away by time, forever gone. continue reading and look at photographs

Nevertheless, it's unusual to find holy relics that could possibly be what they claim, and the researchers say they're surprised.

The bones were originally discovered in 2010 by archaeologist Kazimir Popkonstantinov, under an ancient church on an island in Bulgaria known as Sveti Ivan, or St John.

A small box made of hardened volcanic ash was found nearby, bearing inscriptions in ancient Greek that directly mention John the Baptist and his feast day, and ask God to "help your servant Thomas".

Six human bones, including a tooth and the face part of a cranium, were found in small a marble sarcophagus under the floor near the altar, along with three animal bones.

Continue reading