Pope Donates a Fragment of Forerunner

Mutilating a corpse and discreetly packing a piece in your luggage before boarding a plane is the sort of thing that gets people arrested. But not if you are the Pope.

Lopping off a bit of John XXIII and donating it to Sofia's new cathedral was considered an honour to Bulgaria's Roman Catholics, and to a predecessor who died in 1963. Which part was cut off is not clear, because the gift was not part of the official programme of John Paul's four-day visit to Bulgaria, which ended yesterday.

According to the Rome daily La Repubblica the relic, wrapped in a medieval cloth, will be kept in the cathedral as an object of veneration.

It was removed from John's exhumed and restored corpse last July after he was put in a glass coffin and displayed in St Peter's square to thousands of pilgrims. Known as the Good Pope for his compassion, he is on a Vatican fast-track to canonisation, after which he will be St John.

Probably the most popular pope of modern times, he is revered in Bulgaria because he served there as a priest from 1929 to 1934, and fell in love with the people and country.

Sofia's new cathedral, built to replace one destroyed by bombing in 1944, was expecting a relic in order to make a shrine, but had no inkling it would receive such a spectacular present from the Vatican.

John's body was embalmed hours after his death in June 1963. When it was exhumed last year it was found to be in almost perfect condition, a feat of preservation hailed by some as a miracle. It has now emerged that John Paul seized the opportunity to take a relic.

It could have been any part of the body.

The basilica in Padua displays St Anthony's tongue, jawbone and vocal chords. Other churches and cathedrals boast hanks of hair, bits of bone, heads, fingers and toes.

The practice has long been criticised as a medieval hangover. In a 1520 pamphlet Martin Luther mocked the collection of the archbishop of Mainz, Germany, for including "three flames of the bush of Moses on Mount Sinai" and "two feathers and an egg from the Holy Ghost".

John Paul is a traditionalist whose reverence for relics has reinvigorated the tradition.