One morning, Laura forwarded an Aleteia article about The Relic Project. Anthony Di Mauro founded this project with the mission to “establish a comprehensive online library of 1st and 2nd class relics. We aspire to enable the Church, as a whole, to grow in wisdom and piety through the Saints and thus grow in our adoration of God.”
My first thought was St. Carlo Acutis. He created a database of Eucharistic Miracles, and The Relic Project sounds very similar. We were already fans of St. Carlo Acutis, having seen his Eucharistic Miracles exposition, and visiting his tomb in Assisi.
At the time, The Relic Project’s database contained about 600 relics, all across the world. I checked the map and was pretty impressed. Then I looked at Florida. There were no listed relics in Florida, even though I knew we had several in Ave Maria. Also, the Tomb of St. Carlo Acutis was not yet cataloged. The Relic Project was just getting started, and they were asking for volunteers to help build the database.
Being a Catholic Relic Hunter sounded like it was right up our alley.
We have many photographs of relics from our travels, including the tomb of St. Carlo Acutis, so I applied to be a Relic Hunter. We could make a direct contribution by uploading our photos. Anthony was pretty careful, he interviewed me and asked that I discern for a week before accepting the role. My official title is “Global Curator,” but informally, and cooler, it is Relic Hunter.
Laura also joined the project. Given her talents, Anthony asked her to contribute to The Relic Project’s blog. We actually make a good team.
How a Relic Gets on the Map
My role as a Relic Hunter is to find the relics, verify the authenticity, and document both the relic and its display place. A display place is a church, a shrine, or a chapel. Individual relics are attached to that place. The website shows the place on the map and which relics are there. .
We only show the relics that are displayed for public veneration. Sometimes, we find relics that are only privately viewable, like in an office or private chapel. Those are not included.
Besides being publicly available , to be included in the database a relic must be authentic, which generally requires a certificate of authenticity issued by the proper authorities. The theca (case that contains the relic) is sealed with a wax imprint that matches the certificate.
If you know a public display that is not on the map yet, please contact us through The Relic Project at the About page of the website.
The Road Ahead
Every time we travel, we now look for churches with relics on display. Our first trip after joining the project was to Boise to visit our friends there. We found a church with a very nice relic display, Our Lady of the Holy Rosary. We had a fantastic conversation with the one and only Deacon Lou, who built the Reliquarium. He told some fascinating stories about how he got started and how the relics found him.
On our recent road trip across America, we made a detour to Pittsburg specifically to visit St. Anthony Chapel, home to the largest relic collection outside the Vatican.
Our next trip includes St. Louis for the Beatification of Bishop Fulton Sheen, and then we fly to Rome to start the Via Francesco walk to Assisi. Our first stop in Rome will be to make another visit to the Basilica di San Bartolomeo, which has a display of 20th century martyrs, including those that fought the horrors of communism and fascism. We were moved by that display, but not yet being official Relic Hunters, we did not take photos and documentation worthy of The Relic Project and plan to do so this time around.
St. Carlo Acutis, pray for us!