LOWELL — A shiny black van pulled up to Immaculate Conception Church on Wednesday morning, accompanied by a police officer on a motorcycle, lights flashing. The van’s side door slid open, disgorging five Capuchin friars in hooded robes. One carried a silver vessel in the likeness of a house. Inside the house was a glass box. In the box, a dried-out human heart. The heart belonged to St. Padre Pio, a mystical Capuchin friar from Southern Italy and one of the most popular figures in Roman Catholicism. He is said to have bled from stigmata — holes in his hands, feet, and sides, as if he’d been nailed to a cross like Jesus — from 1918 until his death in 1968. His heart’s visit to Boston this week ...
No comments:
Post a Comment