Saturday, April 10, 2010

Behold!

The Cross always faces threats from any who would bend its arms into either a swastika or a circle, which Chesterton stated so well in The Ball and the Cross.


Sensing the dangers posed by German officials' interest in the Shroud during a visit from Hitler to Italy in 1938, the following year the Vatican and the royal Savoy family decided to move the unique and revered cloth bearing the likeness of Christ to a locale offering more safety than the Cathedral of Turin. ... King Umberto II of Savoy, whose family had owned and protected the Shroud since the 15th century, thought that the Vatican was the only place it might be safe, while Pope Pius XII was inclined to send it to Montecassino for hiding, related Fr. Cardin. In the end, the decision was made to store it with the Benedictines in the town of Avellino, more than 500 miles from Turin in the southern region of Campania. The decision was fortuitous as the monastery at Montecassino was later destroyed by Allied bombing meant to dislodge a Nazi stronghold there.

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