c. 1999 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ The bones of St. Therese of Lisieux, the Little Flower of the Roman Catholic Church, are making their first trip to the United States more than a century after her death, and the visit is stirring new interest in devotion to religious relics.

A part of church tradition from its earliest days, the veneration of relics is considered passe by many American Catholics. But organizers expect millions to view the remains of the French nun who died in a convent at age 24 and is considered the most popular saint of this century.

The bones, which rest in a gold-encrusted box called a reliquary, arrived Tuesday (Oct. 5) in New York and will be displayed in churches around the country.

The Rev. Robert Colaresi, national director of the Little Flower Society founded in honor of St. Therese, said his office is receiving 100 calls a day from people seeking information about the visit.

“I am surprised,” said Colaresi, whose organization helps support the education of Carmelite priests. “I’m not cynical, but many Americans profess to be beyond all this relics nonsense. But not at all. I expect millions of people will come to these sites.”

The reliquary will travel to 24 states before departing for the Philippines on Jan. 28. Colaresi said his organization has printed 1.25 million prayer cards for distribution at display sites, but he is now concerned that won’t be enough.

Experts said many expressions of devotion that were shunned in the wake of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s have begun to enjoy renewed respect and appreciation.

“I think there was an elitist approach to spirituality that didn’t recognize that there are different cultural ways of approaching God,” said the Rev. Thomas Reese, editor of the Jesuit magazine America.

The rapid increase in the number of Latin Catholics in the United States helped temper that attitude, Reese said, as more liberal Anglos began to be exposed to a more devotional form of spirituality.

“That doesn’t mean everybody should have relics, but it doesn’t mean no one should have them,” he said. “If they make people more merciful, kind, forgiving and bring them closer to God, then I think we should not be so judgmental and critical.”

Other experts said it may be St. Therese’s story, one embraced by liberals and conservatives alike, rather than her bones, that is stirring attention.

“I think the interest is more in Therese than the relics,” said the Rev. Robert Wister, a professor of church history at Seton Hall University in New Jersey. “The relics are a catalyst.”

Relics have a long and controversial history in the Catholic Church. What began as veneration in the early centuries of Christianity had become a scandal by the Middle Ages, when relics were bought and sold and included such hoaxlike treasures as a piece of Moses’ burning bush and a feather from the wings of the Angel Gabriel. The sale of relics was one of the abuses that helped spark the Reformation.

Rosa DaVila, who will sing in a Spanish and English choir to honor St. Therese at St. Cecilia’s Church in Englewood, N.J., said she is troubled that some Protestants believe Catholics worship idols when they venerate the statues and relics of saints.

“It’s like when someone close to you dies,” she said. “You remember them. We don’t worship statues. It’s just a symbol of remembrance.”

The Englewood parish, which is staffed by Carmelites, has its own relic of St. Therese, a bone chip that resides in a marble pedestal holding a statue of the Little Flower.

St. Therese, one of three sisters who entered a Carmelite convent in the late 1800s, died of tuberculosis in 1897. But her writings, particularly her autobiography, “Story of a Soul,” lived on. She was beatified in 1924, and five years ago Pope John Paul II named her a doctor of the church, meaning she is considered a valuable teacher of the faith.

That action renewed interest in a woman who has been immensely popular in the United States since the 1920s. Reform-minded Catholics point out that, on several occasions, she expressed a desire to be a priest.

Devotees say the writings of the Little Flower, a name drawn from her love of the roses in her convent courtyard, are simple enough to be accessible but inspirational in their deep devotion. On her deathbed, Therese wrote that she would shower rose petals on the world from heaven.

Some Catholics find the writings particularly poignant, given the suffering the young sister was enduring in her final years.

“For me, prayer is an aspiration of the heart,” she wrote. “It is a simple glance directed to heaven, it is a cry of gratitude and love in the midst of trials as well as joy; finally, it is something great, supernatural, which expands my soul and unites me to Jesus.”

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