Restorers in the Vatican Museums’ restoration laboratory work on the Cross of Sant’Eutizio. / Credit: Vatican Museums
Rome Newsroom, Apr 7, 2023 / 06:00 am (CNA).
In the late summer and fall of 2016, central Italy was devastated by several powerful earthquakes.
Numerous historic churches and buildings were destroyed in the quakes — including one of the oldest monastic complexes in Italy, the Abbey of Sant’Eutizio, whose bell tower and church roof collapsed.
One of the Benedictine abbey’s artworks, a crucifix painted by Nicola di Ulisse da Siena around 1472, was shattered into at least 30 pieces in the rubble.
The Abbey of Sant’Eutizio after the 2016 earthquakes that destroyed the bell tower and part of the church roof. Credit: Vatican Museums
The fragments of the cross, which had hung above the altar of the abbey church, were recovered weeks later by firefighters and a team of art restorationists from the Vatican.
Barbara Jatta, the director of the Vatican Museums, told EWTN News the restoration of the cross was not an ordinary project for the museums, which is usually busy restoring, cleaning, and maintaining the thousands of works in its own collections.
“But this was a special occasion and really was the will of Pope Francis,” she said.
The restored Cross of of Sant’Eutizio hanging in the Vatican Museums. Credit: Anthony Johnson/CNA
A team in the Vatican Museums’ painting and wood restoration laboratory worked on the cross since 2018.
The work is now part of a temporary exhibit in the Vatican Museums, “Fragments of Hope,” recounting the story of the crucifix’s destruction and restoration.
The cross will be returned to the people of the Archdiocese of Spoleto-Norcia this summer and displayed in the diocesan museum. The reconstruction of the abbey began in September 2022 and will take several years to complete.
The “Fragments of Hope” temporary exhibit in the Vatican Museums. Credit: Anthony Johnson/CNA
Anna Pizzamano, an expert in Medieval art, told EWTN News the restoration of the cross was an incredible feat, since not all of the pieces were able to be recovered from the church rubble.
“A real miracle materialized, why? … The restorers were able to reconstruct the whole cross,” she said.
She noted that the artwork is “one of a kind” and that few paintings by the artist Nicola di Ulisse da Siena remain today.
“Not having a work like the Cross of Sant’Eutizio would have been a dramatic loss,” she added.
An art restorationist works on the Cross of Sant’Eutizio in the Vatican Museums’ laboratory. Credit: Vatican Museums
She pointed out the imagery of the pelican depicted at the top of the crucifix: “Here is the living and present body of Christ, which is symbolized by this pelican.”
“Of course, the cross, among all the symbols, remains the symbol par excellence, the most important sign that characterizes our faith. It is not just something that hangs from our neck or we are used to seeing, it is the deepest sign of our faith,” she said.
Pizzamano helped curate the “Fragments of Hope” exhibit, which opened last month.
The Cross of Sant’Eutizio is a symbol of hope for the people of Umbria, who have experienced devastating earthquakes, the COVID-19 pandemic, and personal difficulties, she said. “The hope is that of Christ overcoming death going into Easter.”
A pre-October 2016 photo of the Abbey of Sant’Eutizio showing where the cross used to hang above the altar. Credit: Vatican Museums
The art historian said the Vatican Museums decided to ask the archbishop of Spoleto-Norcia to compose a prayer for the unveiling of the restored cross.
“It is a prayer which illustrates precisely the confidence, the hope, and the joy of not only having recovered a work of art of this hue but also a symbol of hope for all the people hard hit by the earthquake,” Pizzamano said.
It is “all the more so in this important time of Lent, which sets us on the Easter journey,” she continued. “It is something that restores great peace, great consolation in people’s hearts, not only of those who have worked physically [on the cross’s restoration] but [also] of those who will soon be able to return to pray before this cross.”
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Oslo, Norway, Oct 1, 2018 / 05:10 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- Among the 331 candidates for the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize are the Copts, the Christian ethnoreligious group of Egypt.
Coptic Orphans, a Christian developmental organization, announced the nomination Sept. 24.
The group said that the Copts have been nominated “for their refusal to retaliate against deadly and ongoing persecution from governments and terrorist groups in Egypt and elsewhere.”
This year, 216 individuals and 115 organizations have been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. The award’s recipient will be announced Oct. 5.
Copts make up an estimated 10 percent of Egypt’s population, and they face a constant threat of violence.
In 2015, 21 Copts were beheaded by Islamic State in Libya; they have been recognized as martyrs by the Coptic Orthodox Church.
Coptic churches in Egypt are frequently bombed.
In December 2017, ten people were reported dead after terrorists attacked a Coptic church near Cairo. Forty-nine Christians died in church bombings on Palm Sunday in 2017. A Coptic priest was murdered in a knife attack in Cairo in October 2017.
Christians in Egypt have long faced attacks from Islamist extremists, particularly since Egypt’s military ousted president Mohammed Morsi, of the Muslim Brotherhood, in 2013.
Sister Scholastica Radel (left) and Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, discuss the recent exhumation of the order’s foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, in an interview with EWTN News In Depth on May 30, 2023, at their abbey in Gower, Missouri. / EWTN News
Washington, D.C. Newsroom, Jun 4, 2023 / 08:00 am (CNA).
Her flashlight was dim, so when Mother Abbess Cecilia Snell first peered inside the cracked coffin lid and saw a human foot inside a black sock where one would expect to find only bone and dust, she didn’t say anything.
Instead, she took a step back, collected herself, and leaned in for another look, just to be sure. Then she screamed for joy.
“I will never forget that scream for as long as I live,” recalled Sister Scholastica Radel, the prioress, who was among the members of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, who were present to exhume the remains of their foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster.
“It was a very different scream than any other scream,” the abbess agreed. “Nothing like seeing a mouse or something. It was just pure joy. ‘I see her foot!’”
What the sisters discovered that day would cause a worldwide sensation: Roughly four years after her burial in a simple wooden coffin, Sister Wilhelmina’s unembalmed body appeared very much intact.
In an exclusive TV interview with EWTN News In Depth, the two sisters shared details of their remarkable discovery — revealing, among other things, that Sister Wilhelmina’s body doesn’t exhibit the muscular stiffness of rigor mortis — and reflected on the deeper significance of the drama still unfolding at their Abbey of Our Lady of Ephesus in rural Gower, Missouri.
They also clarified that Sister Wilhelmina’s coffin was exhumed on April 28, nearly three weeks earlier than CNA had understood. The sisters explained that it took about two weeks to remove dirt, mold, and mildew before they moved her body to the church. You can hear excerpts from the interview and other commentaries in the video at the end of this story.
Pilgrims visit the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, the foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Gower, Missouri. EWTN News
Of particular significance to the members of the contemplative order, known for their popular recordings of Gregorian chants and devotion to the Traditional Latin Mass, is that the traditional habit of their African American foundress also is surprisingly well-preserved.
“It’s in better condition than most of our habits,” Mother Cecilia told EWTN’s Catherine Hadro.
“This is not possible. Four years in a wet coffin, broken in with all the dirt, all the bacteria, all the mildew, all the mold — completely intact, every thread.”
For the sisters, the symbolism is profound. A St. Louis native, Sister Wilhelmina spent 50 years in another religious order but left after it dispensed with the requirement of wearing its conventional habit and altered other long-established practices. She founded the Benedictines of Mary in 1995 when she was 70 years old.
“It’s so appropriate, because that’s what Sister Wilhelmina fought for her whole religious life,” Mother Cecilia said of the habit.
“And now,” Sister Scholastica said, “that’s what’s standing out. That’s what she took on to show the world that she belonged to Christ, and that is what she still shows the world. Even in her state, even after death, four years after the death, she’s still showing the world that this is who she is. She’s a bride of Christ, and nothing else matters.”
‘I did a double take’
The Benedictine community exhumed Sister Wilhelmina, almost four years after her death, after deciding to move her remains to a new St. Joseph’s Shrine inside the abbey’s church, a common custom to honor the founders of religious orders, the sisters said.
Members of the community did the digging themselves, “a little bit each day,” Mother Cecilia said. The process began on April 26 and culminated with a half-dozen or so sisters using straps to haul the coffin out of the ground on April 28.
The abbess revealed that there was a feeling of anticipation among the sisters to see what was inside the coffin.
“There was a sense that maybe God would do something special because she was so special and so pure of heart,” Mother Cecilia said.
It was the abbess who looked through the cracked lid first, shining her flashlight into the dark coffin.
“So I looked and I kind of did a double take and I kind of stepped back. ‘Did I just see what I think I saw? Because I think I just saw a completely full foot with a black sock still on it,'” she recalled saying to herself.
Members of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, lead a procession with the body of their foundress, Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, at their abbey in Gower, Missouri, on May 29, 2023. Joe Bukuras/CNA
Sister Wilhelmina’s features were clearly recognizable; even her eyebrows and eyelashes were still there, the sisters discovered. Not only that, but her Hanes-brand socks, her brown scapular, Miraculous Medal, rosary beads, profession candle, and the ribbon around the candle — none of it had deteriorated.
The crown of flowers placed on her head for her burial had survived, too, dried in place but still visible. Yet the coffin’s fabric lining, the sisters noted, had disintegrated. So had a strap of new linen the sisters said they used to keep Sister Wilhelmina’s mouth closed.
“So I think everything that was left to us was a sign of her life,” Sister Scholastica reflected, “whereas everything pertaining to her death was gone.”
Another revelation from the interview: Contrary to what one would expect in the case of a four-year-old corpse, Sister Wilhelmina’s body is “really flexible,” according to Sister Scholastica.
“I mean, you can take her leg and lift it,” Mother Cecilia observed.
EWTN News In Depth also spoke with Shannen Dee Williams, an author and scholar who is an expert on the history of Black Catholicism. Sister Wilhelmina’s story, she said, is an important reminder of “the the great diversity and beauty of the Black Catholic experience across the spectrum.”
“It’s a really important story that reminds us of what is the great diversity of what is the Black Catholic experience.” – @BlkNunHistorian explains the significance of Sister Wilhelmina choosing a traditional habit for her community. pic.twitter.com/nJmyQ6UYjA
— EWTN News In Depth (@EWTNNewsInDepth) June 3, 2023
‘A unifying moment’
There has been no formal declaration by Church authorities that Sister Wilhelmina’s body is incorrupt, nor has an independent analysis been conducted of her remains, the condition of which has puzzled even some experienced morticians. Neither is there any official process yet underway to put the African American nun on a possible path to sainthood.
Pilgrims visit the body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, foundress of the Benedictines of Mary, Queen of Apostles, in Gower, Missouri. EWTN News
In the interview, Mother Cecilia called what’s happening at the abbey “a unifying moment for everybody” in a time of discord.
“There’s so much division, and it’s crazy,” she said. “We’re children of God the Father, every single one of us. And so you see, Sister Wilhelmina is bringing everyone together . . . I mean, this is God’s love pouring forth through people of every race, color,” she said.
“They come and they’re blown away, and it makes them think,” the abbess said. “It makes them think about God, about, ‘OK, why are we here? Is there more than just my phone, and my job, and my next vacation?’”
As for what comes next, no one can say. “We love God so much, his sense of humor, the irony, this humble little black nun hidden away in a monastery is a catalyst for this. It’s like a spark to send fire to the world,” Mother Cecilia said.
“It’s just remarkable,” she said. “But this is the kind of thing that God does when we need a wake-up call.”
Vatican and China flags. / Credit: esfera/Shutterstock
Vatican City, Aug 27, 2024 / 13:00 pm (CNA).
The Vatican announced Tuesday its “satisfaction” that China has officially recognized Bishop Melchior Shi Hongzhen as bishop of Tianjin. &n… […]
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