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 St Laurence O'Toole relic - which has been venerated for 800 years - was stolen from Christ Church Cathedral in October 2012. Read more

He decided to further search the online auction site, and found "pages and pages" of other first class relics for sale, violating eBay's own policy that prohibits the sale of human body parts, other than human scalp hair.

Scheel, who is also the founder and editor of the Catholic resource site uCatholic, said he tried to use eBay's "Report Item" feature in order to alert the site of the first class relics, but he said the closest option given from the available drop-down list states: "The item in this listing is an artifact, fossil, or relic taken from federal or state public land or Native American land or battlefield."

Catholic News Agency reached out to eBay for comment on this issue, but did not receive a response by press time.

The listing of first class relics "is incredibly insensitive to the Catholic faith in way I doubt would be tolerated for other religions," Scheel said.

"But also...common decency should tell eBay that profiting off of the sale of body parts is ghastly and unethical, no matter who the remains belonged to in life."

That's why Scheel decided to launch a petition calling for eBay to remove the listings of the first class relics. He hopes to obtain signatures from at least 25,000 Catholics in order to alert the site of the illicit sales.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: orthodoxwiki.org