c. 2004 Religion News Service

NEW ORLEANS _ As often occurs in stories like this, Monte Kniffen was looking for something else in the regional archives of an order of Catholic priests in Denver when he happened on two folded paper packets bearing the precise, gorgeous penmanship of a 19th century hand.

He knew the 1-by-2-inch packets had never been cataloged into the inventory of the Redemptorist order of Catholic priests. But he immediately recognized their import: Folded inside, the notations said, were locks of hair clipped from Blessed Francis Xavier Seelos: a hero of the order who, 137 years later, now stands on the threshold of sainthood.

The packets were dated Oct. 4, 1867, the day Seelos died of yellow fever in New Orleans.

And they were signed “Br. Louis.”

That, the order’s historians know, would be Brother Louis Kenning, the infirmarian who would have cared for the dying Seelos _ and who, in time, would become one of Seelos’ most vocal admirers.

The Denver find a few weeks ago has astonished champions of Seelos.

Seelos’ admirers cherish his memory as an uncommonly pious and popular priest who combined a deep spirituality with a gift for touching ordinary people. A Bavarian, Seelos worked among German-speaking Catholic immigrants in Annapolis, Md., Pittsburgh, Detroit and New Orleans.

He served in New Orleans only a little more than a year. But he quickly became so popular that when he fell ill in one of the city’s periodic summer outbreaks of yellow fever, the Daily Picayune published somber updates on his deteriorating condition.

For years, Redemptorists and other friends of Seelos have been pushing to have the Vatican formally declare him a saint of the Catholic Church. And in Catholic spirituality the mortal remains of saints _ so-called “first-class relics” _ are treated with extraordinary reverence.

Early Christians believed that prayers offered over saints’ remains were more effective because they were heroes and favorites of God.

To some extent, that regard endures today.

Four years ago, as Seelos moved toward beatification, the second-to-last step in the Vatican’s saint-making process, Vatican officials opened Seelos’ grave beneath the floor of St. Mary’s Assumption Church.

The priest’s body was exhumed and examined. His remains were later transferred to an ornate wooden reliquary more visible to pilgrims who come daily to the National Seelos Shrine to pray for the priest’s help.

The items saints wore or handled _ such as rosaries, Bibles or personal effects _ are preserved as second-class relics. But Seelos’ admirers believe those relatively few articles are fully accounted for, said the Rev. Byron Miller, the Redemptorist priest who runs the shrine and helps manage the Seelos canonization campaign.

“So to find a new first-class relic at this late date is almost a miracle in itself,” Miller said.

In time, Miller hopes to display the locks from one packet in a special case at the Seelos shrine that already displays a fragment of the dead priest’s breastbone: more of the Catholic tradition of reverence for saints’ remains, he said.

The other will go into safekeeping off-site, Miller said.

The hair itself appears quite ordinary, even after more than a century and a half. A full tuft more than an inch long, Seelos’ hair is browner than Miller expected, given contemporary accounts that Seelos was going gray at 48.

Clipping locks of hair as a remembrance was then a common practice, said Kniffen, a professional archivist.

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And Brother Kenning was an uncommon admirer, Miller said.

Twelve years Seelos’ senior, Kenning first met Seelos in 1843, when they were both in training in Baltimore, Miller said.

As the house infirmarian 24 years later, in 1867, he may have stood with his German colleagues around Seelos’ New Orleans deathbed that October Friday at 5:45 p.m., Miller said. Contemporary accounts indicate that as Seelos lay dying, his fellow priests sang him two of his favorite Marian hymns in German.

Redemptorist records show that not long after Seelos’ death, Kenning began to urge his Redemptorist superiors in Rome to start the saint-making process on his friend’s behalf: to collect Seelos’ writings and to begin taking the testimony of admiring contemporaries.

“From the depths of my heart I state that if he is not a saint, then all of us here in America have to give up all hope of ever becoming holy,” Kenning wrote. “Indeed, he was already a saint when he was a novice.”

Kenning had eight years to live after Seelos’ death. He still lies near Seelos, buried near the base of St. Mary’s pulpit, from which his friend often preached.”

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Miller and Kniffen are both at a loss to explain how the Seelos artifacts found their way to the Redemptorists’ Denver archive. There are a few theories, all of which involve the shuffling of Redemptorist records among sites as the order reorganized several times over the years.

The Denver archives contain many of the order’s records _ and, like many attics, they are also the gathering place for a large collection of personal belongings, in this case the effects of Redemptorist priests who passed them on to the order, Kniffen said.

DEA/JL END NOLAN