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| At the Church of San Andrea in Pescara. By the artist Stefano di Stasio with mosaic by Marco Santi of Ravenna (2013) |
(Note: As Archbishop Forte dedicated to St. John Paul II a great portion of his homily for the feast of the Holy Face which coincided with the 100th anniversary of the pontiff's birth, some further reflection seems appropriate about St. Pope John Paul II's influence which discreetly ensured the re-emergence of the Holy Face back into history during the years just prior to the Great Jubilee of 2000.)
Text and Photos by Antonio Bini
The great Polish pope, at the end of the last century had
become aware of the reality of the Holy Face, mainly thanks to Cardinal
Fiorenzo Angelini, then president of the International Institute of Research on
the Face of Christ, founded in 1997. Though he was already more than 80 years
old, the cardinal threw himself enthusiastically into this far from
easy undertaking, calling on the collaboration of Fr. Heinrich Pfeiffer, S.J., then professor of Christian art at the Pontifical Gregorian
University of Rome and member of the Pontifical Commission for the Cultural
Heritage of the Church. Fr. Pfeiffer's thesis about the identification of
Veronica with the Holy Face of Manoppello was presented at the first
international congress promoted by the Institute.
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| Sr. Blandina Paschalis Schlömer exiting the Church of San Nicola on the Feast of the Holy Face with Archbishop Bruno Forte behind her. It was Sr. Blandina who first informed Fr. Pfeiffer of the existence of the Holy Face at Manoppello |
Just prior to the second international conference, which was held on October 23 1998, the
Polish pope sent Cardinal Angelini, a message addressed to
the participants in which he expressed the following desire: "May the
veneration and study of the Holy Face prepare your minds for the special
reflection on the Person of the Father, which the Church is setting for itself
during the next year, in preparation for the great Jubilee of the year
2000", which can certainly be seen in continuity with the unforgettable
appeal from the opening discourse of his pontificate : "Be not afraid!
Open, indeed, throw open wide the doors to Christ!"
Cardinal Angelini himself, named a cardinal by the
Polish pope in 1991, wrote that the impetus for the Research Institute,
which he founded together with the Benedictine Congregation of the Sisters
of Reparation of the Holy Face of Our Lord Jesus Christ, "was
suggested by the circumstance, that the year of 1997, at the will of the Holy Father
John Paul II, was dedicated, throughout the church, to a special reflection on
the Person of Christ." (F. Angelini, L’uomo delle Beatitudini, Editrice
Velar, 2000, p. 176). Probably it was Fr. Pfeiffer himself who told me that the
Pope had asked the Canons of St. Peter’s to have the Veronica from St. Peter's Basilica brought to his apartments, and then was
disappointed with what he saw.
From credible sources, we know that in those years there
were numerous meetings between John Paul II and Cardinal Angelini in which they often spoke of the Holy Face of Manoppello, to which the cardinal
had become very devoted, with frequent visits to Manoppello. On some of these
visits to Manoppello I was also present.
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At the end of the Great Jubilee of 2000, John Paul II
published the apostolic letter "Novo Millennio Ineunte", (January
6, 2001) in which he analyzed the intense Jubilee event just
concluded. Looking toward the third millennium he prophetically
invited all to resume their ordinary path, bringing into one's soul the richness of the
experiences lived, with "the gaze that remains more than ever fixed
on the Face of the Lord" (cf. Section II, "A Face to Contemplate").
This circumstance has drawn in recent years many Poles to
Manoppello, including the Polish nuns, the Handmaidens of the Holy Blood, and
has brought about as well the enthronement of the Holy Face in churches of
Katowice (2016) and in recent weeks in Krakow, the city to which the young
Wojtyla moved at the age of 18. I also remember seeing the exceptional number
of buses arriving at the shrine of the Holy Face of groups of Polish pilgrims
heading to or returning from Rome on the occasion of the canonization of St.
John Paul, on April 27, 2014.
According to rumors dating from the late 1990s in
Manoppello, the pope was even seen coming for a brief visit to the Holy Face,
without having had alerted anyone. A hypothesis not to be excluded, considering
that after his death, his secretary, Cardinal Stanislaus Dziwisz, admitted
in his book "A Life with Karol" (ed. Rizzoli, Milan, 2007), that
John Paul II left the Vatican more than 100 times to travel to the Abruzzo
mountains, without the Cardinal entering into descriptions of the individual
excursions. Tuesdays were normally the day planned for these incognito
getaways. And at that time on weekdays it was very possible to find the Shrine
completely empty.
Cardinal Angelini himself, speaking at the University of
Chieti, on February 10, 2006, at the international conference "The Holy
Face and the iconography of the image of Christ", desired to attribute the
flowering of the initiative of the creation of the Research Institute on the
Face of Christ to some circumstances that he did not hesitate to call
"extraordinary". These include the aforementioned apostolic letter "Novo
Millennio Ineunte" by John Paul II, of "revered and holy
memory". This text should be compared with the letter "Tertio
Millennio Adveniente" (November 10, 1994), about the preparation of
the Great Jubilee, in which the highlighted "distinctly
Christological character" was not accompanied by any reference
to the Face of Christ, to understand the evolution of the thought of the Polish
pope.
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| Cardinal Fiorenzo Angelini and Father Heinrich Pfeiffer on February 10, 2006 at the University of Chieti just months before the September 1, 2006 visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Manoppello to Venerate the Holy Face |
On that occasion, Cardinal Angelini extolled
the person of Fr. Pfeiffer, to whom he addressed "a greeting and a
thank you to the three-times most dear Father Pfeiffer, who is a great apostle
of the Holy Face of Manoppello yes, but of the Holy Face as such. A great
scholar and above all a great priest and exemplary religious."
In his speech, transcribed in full in the magazine Il Volto
Santo di Manoppello, No. 1, July 2006, p. 6ff, the Cardinal, speaking of the
Holy Face, asserted the need to continue the thorough study of "historical
facts (which are) in some ways still mysterious” affirming his personal belief
that we are dealing with the Veronica, as he already had clearly stated in his
preface to Fr. Pfeiffer’s book ("Il Volto Santo di Manoppello”, Carsa Edizioni, 2000).
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| Archbishop Forte and Cardinal Angelini at the University of Chieti February 10, 2006 |
Further research should be done on that intense period
immediately prior to the Great Jubilee of 2000. In the meantime there
is little doubt that St. John Paul II belongs to the recent history
of the Holy Face, as does his successor Benedict XVI.
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