Originally published at National Catholic Register
COMMENTARY: A physician’s study of the Sudarium of Manoppello brings a new look at the ‘dazzling brightness of Christ’s face’
For the first-ever Holy Year, which Pope Boniface VIII (1294-1303) introduced as a Christian jubilee for the year 1300, the most important destination for many pilgrims to Rome was not an audience with the Pope or even the tombs of the apostles, but a gossamer-thin veil purporting to show the face of Christ.
This was the cloth called the Sanctum Sudarium in Latin (Holy Cloth) and is better known as “Veronica’s Veil.”
The veil, regarded at the time to be the greatest treasure of St. Peter’s Basilica, was considered to be a relic first mentioned in St. John’s account of the resurrection together with a large linen cloth, which many now believe is the Shroud of Turin.
In January 1208, a barefoot Pope Innocent III carried the Sudarium in its crystal reliquary from St. Peter’s Basilica to the nearby Hospital Santo Spirito in Sassia for the first time in Rome, thus making it known throughout the Catholic world. Since 1620, the same cloth has been venerated as the “Holy Face” (Volto Santo) in a Capuchin church on a hill
