Italy Blog #59: Vatican's Dead Pope Display

This blog of our May 2016 Italy trip seems more suitable for Halloween. As we mentioned in an earlier blog, it was the "Jubilee Year" for the Catholic Church. Whenever that happens the church goes into the crypt and brings up the glass coffins of dead popes to display. It's a weird custom.

WHAT'S WITH THE DEAD POPES ON DISPLAY? - The corpses of Padre Pio and Croatian Saint Leopold Mandic (1866-1942) were  on display after being paraded through the city in 2015. They bring them out and if they haven't decomposed, they fix 'em up. 
The NY Times reported: Padre Pio’s face mask is made of silicone, the rubberlike polymer, not silicon, the semi-metallic element. Padre Leopoldo’s mask is made of plastic; his corpse is not “enhanced” with silicon.

Padre Pio's body was exhumed in southern Italy in 2008 and partially reconstructed with a silicone mask

The mystic monk, was said to suffer from stigmata during his life, has been venerated by Pope Francis

Dead Pope #1

He was declared a saint in 2002 and at his shrine in San Giovanni still attracts thousands of visitors annually 

Dead Pope #2's glass coffin from an angle

Dead Pope #2

He was accompanied on the trip to St Peter's by another Saint Leopold Mandic (1866-1942), a Croatian Capuchin who was, like Pio, celebrated for his skill in receiving confessions - a quality Francis wants to champion during the Jubilee year. 

NEXT:  OUTSIDE THE BUILDING