Pope Benedict XVI travelled Friday morning by helicopter from his summer residence of Castelgandolfo to the Shrine of the Holy Face at Manoppello in the Italian region of Abruzzi.
In the year 1506, exactly 500 years ago, an unknown pilgrim brought the Face to Manoppello and gave it to one of the town notables who kept it in his family home. Years later it passed to another family who, in 1638, donated it to the shrine of the Friars Minor Capuchins where it is displayed in an ostensory over the main altar.
The Holy Face is a cloth veil protected between two sheets of glass. It measures 17 x 24 cm and bears the effigy of a long-haired man. His cheeks are dissimilar: one, rounder than the other, appears considerably swollen. His eyes look very intensely upward so the whites are visible under the iris. The pupils are completely open, but in an irregular way, and the gaze is at once questioning and loving.
The Holy Father entered the shrine in the company of Archbishop Bruno Forte of Chieti-Vasto. Following a moment of adoration before the Most Holy Sacrament and a prayer before the relic of the Holy Face, the Pope addressed some words to those present.
"Those who meet Jesus," he said, "those who let themselves be attracted by Him and are ready to follow Him even unto the sacrifice of their lives, personally experience, as He did on the cross, how only the 'grain of wheat' that falls to earth and dies brings 'much fruit'."
"This is the way of Christ, the way of total love that triumphs over death," said Pope Bene
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