The Second Coming, Part 8

David leaves a message for Sarah at the front desk, telling her where he is going, and takes a taxi to meet Sr. Gasperri.  The address is a small tortaria. The man is dark and serious-looking.  When asked how he got his name, he will only say that it is from a confidential source, but he is here to help him. The man knows a great deal about relics.  He says there is no shortage of pieces of the “True Cross,” and the Vatican has no problem supplying churches with the stockpile that remains in the depository at the Apostolic Palace.  He says many shrines, such as the one at Lourdes, have taken on the aspect of religious Disneylands.But David presses him about relics of the Precious Blood.  Antonio tells him there are many centers claiming to possess relics of Christ’s blood, including Mantua, the basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome and the abbeys of Fécamp in Normandy and Hailes in Gloucestershire (a place they checked out when they were visiting Glastonbury).  He says that a vial containing Christ’s blood was reported in Mantua as early as 804, and another was unearthed in the garden of Sant’ Andrea in 1041, said to have been preserved by Longinus, the Roman soldier who pierced Christ’s side with a spear.  But the best know shrine revering the blood of Christ is at Bruges (a town in Flanders, Belgium), brought there in 1150 after the Second Crusade, although other reports say it came from Constantinople.  The cylindrical vial, made of crystal, contains lamb’s wool saturated with blood, and the story is that this is a portion of the material used to clean Christ’s wounds before his burial.  This vial is remarkably similar, says Antonio, to one kept in Armenia.  The Bruges relic is one of the most easily seen of all the major relics in Europe, he says, because it is exposed every Friday of the year and throughout the week of Ascensiontide.  The ceremonies are very elaborate, and the reliquary itself is splendid:  four feet of gold and silver adorned with diamonds and other precious stones, among which is a black diamond said to have belonged to Mary Stuart.  He also cites the bizarre phenomenon of the blood of Januarius, a fourth-century martyr and patron saint of Naples.  Several times a year for the past four or five hundred years, the solid black congealed mass of ancient blood, kept in two vials, has changed for no apparent scientific reason into a red liquid, regardless of the weather, time of day or year, or even the presence of television lights and cameras.  Most recently it liquefied shortly after the archbishop of Naples read a letter from the pope declaring him also patron saint of the region of Campagnia.The man seems to know something about David, more perhaps than David would like him to know.  He says he has come to warn him that he may be in danger.  David is genuinely surprised, since a great many people must come to the Vatican asking about holy relics.  Antonio asks him if he has ever heard of the vision of Fatima.  David confesses his ignorance.  Antonio tells him that on May 13, 1917, the Virgin appeared in an extremely bright flash of light to three young shepherds, who said the apparition was “more brilliant than the sun.”  She promised to return to them on the 13th day of the following five months.  On July 13, the children had a terrifying vision of hell and heard several prophecies.  Unlike Bernadette , the children told all the lady had revealed to them, but the third secret, known as the Secret of Fatima, has never been publicly divulged.  (Bernadette had 18 visions of the Madonna in 1858, the seventh of which, on February 23, 1858, revealed three secrets to her which she refused to tell anyone.  When asked by a commission if she would tell the pope the three secrets, she replied, “The Blessed Virgin told me to tell no one.  The pope is someone.”  To lend credibility to the Miracle of Lourdes, Pope John Paul II attributed his recovery from the assassination attempt on May 13, 1981 to water he drank from the spring discovered by Bernadette under instructions given in one of the apparitions).