mistress of the vatican.pdf - End Time Deception

Mistress of the Vatican
intactness was not destined to last much longer. Once Anna Colonna
heard they had put the body back, she sent someone by with a pair of
clippers to snip off a rib.
And now in 1649 the new first lady of Rome wanted an impressive
saintly relic. Olimpia truly needed such heavenly protection now, given
the rising public hatred of her and its consequent dangers. And worse,
the pope seemed to be distancing himself from her, ever so slightly. Perhaps
it was just the stress of the job, but sometimes she didn’t like the
look in his eyes or the tone in his voice.
Olimpia planned to put her relic in the Church of San Martino,
which she had refurbished with Francesco Borromini. Olimpia’s new
town and restored church urgently needed a holy relic to encourage pilgrims
on their way to Rome to stop by and stimulate the local economy.
And Olimpia knew exactly whose body she wanted to raid.
In 1638 the corpse of the fifteenth-century saint Francesca was found
in the Church of Saint Mary on a hill overlooking the Roman Forum,
where it had been buried 198 years earlier. Immediately the bones began
to perform miracles. Sister Teodora Celsi, whose body had been
withered and twisted for sixteen years, dangled her useless arms among
the bones and suddenly felt warmth revive them. She opened her hands,
which had been so tightly closed that her nails had grown into her
palms. Two days later she returned to the saint to have her paralyzed
legs healed. A blind person was restored to sight, two people possessed
by demons were liberated, another cripple leaped up with joy, throwing
away his crutches, and many were healed of fever.
After several days of performing miracles, the bones were dressed in
fine new clothes, covered with silk flowers, and reburied in the original
humble tomb. Bernini designed a grand new tomb in the same church,
of exquisite marble crowned with bronze figures. On the night of March
9, 1649, the saint’s feast day, Saint Francesca’s coffin was to be moved to
the new tomb. This translation, as it was called, was the perfect opportunity
to pocket a relic.
Naturally there would be a stink if Olimpia swiped the whole body.
Decorum decreed that she take only a piece. The best portion of a
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