Pilgrimage to Holy Mountain 21

21

The Last Piece of the True Cross:

The same morning that Father Athanasius told me about the compulsive pilgrim who had bitten off a piece of Saint Anne’s mummified foot he told me another story about the unholy propensities of some of the other recent pilgrims to Holy Mountain.

It seems that the summer before my visit there was another awful calamity. Two Greek thieves, pretending to be pilgrims, somehow made off with one of Holy Mountain’s most venerable treasures: the last authenticated piece of the True Cross.

The robbers, when apprehended in Thessaloniki, were still in possession of the priceless jeweled golden reliquary that had contained the holy fragment but unfortunately they had thrown the old piece of wood away.

Tomasito, 2009


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