02Knights Templar - Julian Emperor

SAINTS IN THE MODERN ERA
other important Catholic figures including various popes and
the Virgin Mary.The cost of the virtual prayer card service is
three euros a week. However, a conference of Italian bishops
on 4 December 2007 concluded that the service was blasphemous
and exploitative. Bishop Lucio Soravito De Franceshi
speaking on behalf of the conference members commented
that,‘this is a poor show and has nothing to do with faith. It is
exploiting the faith, lowering it to banality with no sense. It is
a blasphemous idea that will horrify the true faithful. For the
church a saint is someone of great heroic virtue, not someone
to be commercially exploited.’ (The Daily Telegraph,
Wednesday, 5 December 2007, p.20)
In response to the criticisms the director of the company,
Barbara Labate said, ‘I don’t think it’s scandalous or blasphemous
at all.We have had saint and prayer cards for more than
600 years and we will continue to have them. What we are
doing is moving with the times.’ (The Daily Telegraph,
Wednesday, 5 December 2007, p.20) Whilst it is difficult to
believe that the main motivation for the provision of the virtual
prayer cards is anything other than commercial, it is
tempting to say that they are simply continuing a long standing
tradition in which the veneration of saints becomes a
source for the creation of revenue. During the Middle Ages
many monasteries and churches valued the relics of saints that
they held because it meant a constant stream of pilgrims to
their shrines. There are numerous instances of churches
searching out the relics of saints in order to become important
pilgrimage sites. One such example is the translation of
the relics of St Winifride in 1138 from North Wales to
Shrewsbury Abbey in Shropshire. The abbey was founded in
the wake of the Norman Conquest and actively searched for
the relics of a saint in order to increase its spiritual impor-
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