Image source: The Daily Compass
CV NEWS FEED // The Italian city of Terni held a two-week celebration honoring a relic of the Precious Blood of Jesus culminating in a Mass where the bishop blessed the faithful with the relic on Sunday, September 22.
The Italian news agency Daily Compass reports that the Diocese of Terni revived the devotion to the relic, which started in the 1600s. A priest at the Terni’s Santa Maria Assunta Cathedral, Father Alessandro Rossini, said that the feast of the Precious Blood is “an image of the rebirth of the city… and, in its broadest sense, of the fight against the moral plague: a sign of hope for everyone, starting with the younger generations, transmitting to them the truth that salvation comes from the Blood of Christ.”
Father Rossini also described the relic. He said that it consists of a “pectoral cross that in the transverse part bears a splinter of the True Cross of Christ and in the longitudinal part, in a small vial, a few drops of Jesus[’s] blood.”
The relic became well-known in the early 1600s, when Cardinal Francesco Angelo Rapaccioli met his friend Saint Joseph of Cupertino in Assisi.
Cardinal Rapaccioli had the relic hidden under his vestments and he met Saint Joseph of Cupertino outside of the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi. Daily Compass explains,
“As soon as the two friends faced each other, the saint from Cupertino, by divine inspiration, knelt in an act of adoration to the relic of the Precious Blood that the cardinal wore, hidden, beneath his robes.”
Cardinal Rapaccioli served as the Bishop of Terni from 1646-1656, and donated the relic to the diocese in 1531.
The relic is also known for its role in a deadly 1656 plague epidemic, which reached the town of Terni despite strict precautions from the surrounding cities. The bishop at the time, Most Reverend Sebastiano Gentili, held a procession with the relic and blessed the town with it.
The plague decreased and eventually disappeared after the procession. A local plaque commemorates the event and reads,
To Sebastiano Gentili, bishop of Terni, who, in order to put an end to the plague raging throughout the city, from this tower of Barbarasa, showed the afflicted citizens shut up in their homes the relics of the Blood of Christ, on 21 June 1657. Felice Barbarasa, as a sign of great and revered respect, placed, as a private individual, this plaque in memory of a public benefit.
