world youth day
17 Jul 2008
Anything to Declare?
Holy Rattling Bones! The Pilgrim wonders how the remains of potential saint Pier Giorgio Frassati got through customs
Travellers entering Australia are directed to declare every spice, wooden mask and market trinket to one of the most exhaustive customs systems in the world — and to expect a period of quarantine. A single organism buried deep inside woodwork, we are told, could infest our fragile ecosystem with devastating effects.Australian Customs, however, apparently decided that an 80-year-old human corpse and its coffin required no quarantine period at all.
Pier Giorgio Frassati is considered a role model for Catholic youth and is a potential saint. He died from polio at the age of 24 in 1925. His remains were flown into Sydney last month for World Youth Day. The coffin is being housed at St Mary's Cathedral — Headquarters of Archbishop George Pell and the Sydney Diocese — for public viewing. Catholics maintain that his body has not begun to decompose, although to the disappointment of more zealous pilgrims, the casket lid will not be opened publicly
The mishandling of public viewing of saints in years past is one reason why parishioners might be refused a glimpse of Frassati by the Church. In Goa the Catholic Church used to allow the viewing of the remains of St Francis Xavier every 10 years. Pilgrims and parishioners would touch and kiss the flesh of the saint. A missionary on the move and a founding member of the Jesuit order, St Francis travelled from western Europe through Asia. He died on an island in the South China Sea in 1552 and his remains were eventually set to rest in Goa. In 1634 a woman was followed home by guards who found her in possession of a human toe — Francis Xavier's — which she had bitten off in a moment of religious fervor. The toe remains on display at her family estate.
Church officials may be right to take precautions for the exhibition, lest a particularly faithful follower try to nibble an ear or pull a tooth from the beatified Italian.
Aside from the rather macabre gastronomic appeal of Catholic relics, only one person in NSW Parliament raised the issue of bio-security. Greens MP Sylvia Hale asked whether any precautions had being taken regarding the importation or public showing of the human remains. In response, Ian MacDonald — with all the grace one would expect from the Honourable Minister — sarcastically replied "I think I should do the right thing and refer the question immediately to Tony Burke, who is in charge of the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service, which is responsible for bio-security issues — particularly the importation of corpses from Italy".
The Greens received no serious response, although Hale stressed to newmatilda.com that they are more concerned with more than $100 million of State funding for an organisation that holds questionable policies on contraception and abortion than the "Catholic fascination with worshiping corpses and body parts".
newmatilda.com asked Ian Robinson, former Editor of The Rationalist, what message the display of the coffin sent to Catholic youth. "You'd have to ask them," he said. "The message it sends to me is that they're a pack of nutters."
"Most intelligent Catholics are not impressed by it and don't really believe in it," said Robinson. "The cynical church leaders see it as sop to the masses who are more impressed with a relic than a theological position."
What, then, is the point of this exercise? Is displaying the corpse of an Italian student to the Catholic youth of the world an exercise in good influence? Will Prime Minister Rudd or Premier Iemma condemn the public exhibition of corpses as "disgusting"? Or would the body have to be in a photograph?
The Pilgrim is newmatilda.com's World Youth Day correspondent. Stay tuned for daily updates.
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Catholicism: introducing young people to the wonders of death for 2000 years.
It makes me wonder if the pope mobile is actually some form of cryogenic device, so as soon as the pontiff shuffles off the mortal he can be preserved instantly in a blast of supercooled argon.
Just looking at the accompanying photo, is that a tiny miniskirted woman dancing on the coffin? She has nice legs but the worst carpet burns on her knees.
Struck speechless in disbelief , did they really import a corpse for the event , cool going to use that as a precedent for my next party , or can only a church do that ?
Do they really claim no decomposition and surely customs would have to check the coffin anything could be inside ?
Did this really happen ?
How ?
Surely you can’t do that without quarantine ?
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That’s just so roman catholic
nutters
It took decades, but finally we can import a tasty bit of Parma ham. Maybe the dude has been cured in a smokehouse somewhere deep inside the Vactican, just in case he also loses a toe or two.
Cannibalism is already strong in the Catholic culture anyway what with all that transmutation, body of Christ gear.
There’s a point…..
Is it also somewhat like idolatry ?…………
I thought they could have photos or X-rays of the contents on the sides,-slightly more convincing than a coffin. Still there is a person inthose wafers.
Yes I looked at those dancing legs- woof woof!
Seems 250,000 took mass, that is a lot of Christs in one place. Our Aboriginals should take comfort when accused of being cannibals. If they ever were they don’t do it every Sunday now.
Seven Deadly Sins
1. Pope Benedict proclaimed that homosexuality is a "strong tendency toward an intrinsic moral evil" and "must be seen as objective disorder."
2. Pope Benedict called abortion, birth control and same-sex marriage an obstacle to world peace.
3. The Sydney World Youth Day organisation banned the Catholic gay group Acceptance from participating with a forum. Their presence would promote homosexuality.
4. The WHO estimates 66500 deaths a year from unsafe illegal abortions. The Vatican continually tries to prevent laws on legal and safe abortion in numerous countries. Then Cardinal Ratzinger called voting for pro-choice candidates a sin.
5. Sydney Cardinal Pell, when asked at the WYD in Toronto how to respond to sexual abuse of minors by priests, said: "Abortion is a worse moral scandal than priests sexually abusing young people".
6. The UN reports for 2007 that 33 million people were HIV-positive, 2.1 million newly infected, and that 2.5 million died from AIDS.
7. The Vatican published 2004 a document claiming that condoms have holes and do not protect against AIDS. The WHO, health organisations, and the scientists quoted by the Vatican , reject this claim.
Please be patient homosexuals this pope may yet have a change of mind concerning you. He has a history of mind change. He was a Hitler Youth and later in the Nazi army crewing an anti aircraft battery protecting the German Mercedes factory against Allied bombers. He changed from being a Nazi soldier into becoming a priest. Always an operator he came to the Vatican and worked his way up to becoming Cardinal Ratzinger boss of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. In that capacity he issued through the boss pope the instruction to all RC bishops to stop calling the Anglican churches sister churches as there was only one Christian church and that was the one situated in the Vatican. Wait for it, now on this $120 million Australian taxpayer funded propaganda safari, he has called Christina churches together and said that every element of the church structure was important and then declared,
‘As fellow citizens of the household of God we must work together to ensure that the edifice stands strong so that others will be attracted to enter and discover the abundance of grace.’
So mate as we Anglican heretics are now acceptable you could be next cab off the rank.