When I heard that the skull of St. Thomas Aquinas was coming to several cities in the Eastern United States in the next few weeks, I knew I had to see it.
If the relic of the renowned Dominican friar, who died 750 years ago, could travel 4,000 miles from its resting place in Toulouse, France, where his order was founded, I could certainly make the 29-mile pilgrimage from my Maryland home to one of its stops in Washington, D.C. Plus, the visit had the added appeal of being so uniquely Catholic.
Relics have been part of the church's tradition since its beginning, when the early Christians would make pilgrimages to pray before the bone, or even the fragment of the bone, of a holy person.
Read Full Article »