THE HOLY VEIL OF MANOPPELLO by PAUL BADDE

Description

The horrific 1915 earthquake that leveled tiny Manoppello, Italy, brought forth from the local church’s rubble one of Christendom’s long-lost, but most precious relics: the small cloth that lay over Jesus’ face in the tomb. This small veil absorbed the very first new breath of the Risen Christ–and at the same instant had imprinted on itself, miraculously, a vivid image of the now-resurrected Jesus. Modern scholars have confirmed that this image corresponds perfectly in all its measurements to the face of the dead Christ on the more famous Shroud of Turin. Unlike the Shroud, however, the Holy Face of Manoppello shows not the grim visage of a dead man with eyes closed, but the lively face of the living Christ, His eyes wide open piercing us with their gaze. In 2006, Pope Benedict made a pilgrimage to Manoppello to pray before this image. Since then, tens of thousands of other pilgrims have followed in the pope’s footsteps, making the trek to central Italy to meet Jesus face-to-face. Paper.