Poles Request Popes Heart

Since they're Polish, the church could give them one of those plastic toy hearts, and they won't know the difference.

I suppose, quite some more are.


The practice goes back hundreds of of years. It was very common for European royalty to be buried separately from their heart. The heart was always treated with a special reverence because of its association with the soul and conscience of a man.

Later - as to be read in the quoted article* - this was done with other celebreties as well.

(Relicts of saints are 'buried' all over the globe.)


*Chopin was buried in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. In accordance with his will, however, his heart, taken from his body after death, was brought by his sister to Warsaw where it was placed in an urn installed in a pillar of the Holy Cross church in Krakowskie Przedmiescie.

You beat me to the trough Walter

That business with the relics is not much different from the practices in many countries of digging up bodies for the purpose of black magic (sometimes, the medicine men do not even wait for the body to be dead). There are many accounts of how the corpses of alledged saints were torn apart by the religious mob who wanted a piece of the action. Relics were a great investment spiritually ("hey, I've got the butock of Saint Whassisname, now I will certainly go to heaven") and financially ("5 cents to see the holy buttock of Saint Whassisname, anyone?"). Churches with powerful relics became places of pilgrimage which meant a whole tourism business could grow up around those relics (such as cheap plastic copies (made in China) of the aforementioned holy buttock).
Succesful relics could become a hotly contested commodity. Take for example the bones of St. Nicholas which were "liberated" from their tomb in Myra (now in Turkey) and taken to Bari, Italy, by Italian pirates, then they were stolen again and taken to Spain before being returned to Bari where they are now at the centre of a whole pilgrimage culture, complete with holy water from the saint's bones being sold.
In a way the modern day adoration of celebs complete with the collection of memorabilia is much the same thing (Graceland is after all a place of pilgrimage right?). The only thing lacking is people pandering the left pinky finger of Elvis to the highest bidder (but that is because Elvis still lives, of course, silly me)

An aside:
St. Ludger (Ludgerius, Luidger etc [744 - 809]) was a missionary in Frisia and Saxony, and the first Bishop of Munster in Westphalia.
He founded this diocese in 805 - so they are celebrating the 1200th anniversary there.

His relicts were buried in the abbey of Werden (Essen), which he founded as well.
Some bones, however, were sent from there to Billerbeck (another of his foundations) and Münster.
Last week, the main relicts were transported (with police excort) to Münster: so the first time since 1200 years (nearly) all remains of this saint are together again (for a short period).