Pope Benedict XVI visits the Holy Face in Manopello, Italy

(01 Sep. 2006) : Pope Benedict XVI became the first pontiff on Friday to visit "Veronica's Veil", which Christian tradition says was used to wipe the sweat from Jesus' brow on his way to crucifixion and miraculously recorded his features. Pope Benedict knelt in prayer before the relic also known as the "Sacred Visage", which has been guarded by Capuchin friars in a remote monastery in Manoppello, a small town in the Abruzzo region 200 kms east of Rome. Pope Benedict arrived by helicopter and was greeted by a few thousand pilgrims. Those welcoming the pope included Bishop Bruno Forte of Chieti, a theologian and long-time friend of the pontiff. "Together we seek to know the face of our Lord and in it find a path for our lives," the German-born pope told priests and pilgrims after viewing the relic, housed in a heavy frame adorned with gold and silver above the altar. The sanctuary is visited every year by some 250,000 pilgrims. But officials hope that the pope's visit will increase that number.

The Holy Face is a veil of 6.8 by 9.6 inches, which according to an ancient legend from the apocryphal Acts of Pilate from the 6^th century, is a piece of cloth with which the holy woman Veronica dried Christ’s face on the road to Calvary. On the occasion of the first Holy Year in 1300, Veronica's veil was publicly displayed and became one of the "Mirabilia Urbis"' - "wonders of the City" - for the pilgrims who visited Rome. Traces of Veronica's veil were lost in subsequent years until the Holy Year of 1600, when the veil was found in Manoppello. Father Heinrich Pfeiffer, professor of iconography and Christian art history at the Gregorian University in Rome, studied the veil for 13 years and is the first scientist to say that it is Veronica's veil.