The theft of a vial of the blood of the late pope John Paul II from a church in the mountains outside Rome is odd at first sight because it looks so strange to keep such a thing. On second thoughts, nothing could be more natural than keeping relics of the dead. We keep all kinds of family treasures, handwritten letters and other tokens of an absent presence. What's strange is keeping relics of dead people we never knew.
Protestants tend not to do this in the same way as Catholics. Parts of our cities are crowded with statues, but these are relics at one remove, so to say: they are symbolic recreations with no physical link to the original. If the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square, in Westminster, were also his sepulchre it would be closer to a relic. If it were also thought to work miracles, that would be better still. But I don't think that even Ukip members come to pray at statues of Churchill.
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