The Relic Hunters: How Enthusiasts Have Helped Build Collection Of Saints’ Artifacts
Eric Lavin, a collector of Catholic saint relics, inside Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Newark, N.J. (Photo by Cassidy Grom)
When other boys his age were trading Pokémon or Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Eric Lavin was collecting saints’ relics.
Relics — including swatches of saints’ veils or clothing and even full bones or skulls — have long been collected and displayed in Catholic churches across the world. The faithful engage with them during prayer, touching or kissing the encased objects, as they request the saint’s intercession on their behalf.
In seventh grade, Lavin began writing to other dioceses to request relics, and now, more than 16 years later, Lavin has grown one New Jersey church’s collection from 20 to more than 600 relics.
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On a recent fall day, the now 30-year-old Lavin gave a tour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church in Newark, where many of his finds are stored in ornate alcoves in the sanctuary. Most are small — there are several bits of bone from saints across the world, a prayer card with a strand of another’s hair, and a full knuckle bone of another — but the sheer number of them is impressive. They fill four display cases in the sanctuary, and Lavin said there’s more in the backrooms.
“I’m not Indiana Jones,” Lavin chuckled, as he pats a life-size statue of one of his favorite saints, Padre Pio, an Italian friar who was known to be able to “read souls.”
Lavin explained that he works a day job as a public high school teacher in a few towns over and “moonlights” as a relics custodian.
Custodians, guardians and lay relics enthusiasts like Lavin go by several names, and there are fewer and fewer of them in the United States. In earlier decades, saints’ feast days were a regular feature on parishes’ social calendars, when relics would be pulled off the shelf, dusted off, displayed as part of the celebration and available for veneration. That still happens in some churches — the National Centre for Padre Pio has more than 40 cities listed for its national relic tour — but the inclusion of relics in the life of a local church seems to largely depend on whether the congregation has someone like Lavin.
For the custodians that remain, there are rules to this holy hobby: first and foremost, a relic can never be sold or purchased. The Vatican forbids it. When Lavin writes to postulators for a relic, it is given as a donation. Second, relics have to remain in their containers — most of the ones at Mount Carmel were held in glass containers or lovingly incorporated into a reliquary made with precious metals. Third, relics must be authenticated; many of the relics at Mount Carmel had a red ribbon and wax seal to mark their legitimacy.
There’s no definitive global tally of all the relics in the world, and it would be impossible to get an accurate count as new relics are made every day — any object that touches a first-class relic (like a bone) or a second-class relic (like an item of clothing) becomes a third-class relic. Relics of all kinds can be found outside churches. Some private individuals display them in their private homes, many museums are home to large collections and Lavin even carries a “random assortment” of second-class relics in his wallet.
Photos by Cassidy Grom
About 90 miles away in Barto, Penn., Joseph Santoro, 42, fields dozens of phone calls a day, asking him to investigate the legitimacy of a potential relic. He’s just one of a handful of experts in the United States who are certified to do the work.
Santoro estimates that 50% to 60% of the relics he inspects are fake, and to prove it, he does a little bit of Sherlock Holmes-style detective work. He checks if the wax seal on the relic’s case matches the seal on its documentation; if the wax is too new, that’s an indication the object is a facsimile. He checks the age of the documentation’s paper, comparing it to historical paper production methods; he cross-references the Latin wording on the seal and checks the ink and the style of writing. He researches church records to see if the bishop or church leader who signed the documentation was really around at that time.
It’s a tedious process that can often lead to disappointment for the devout who worked hard to obtain the object in the first place. According to Santoro, a woman recently paid $4,000 on eBay for a relic, only to have Santoro gently break the news to her that it was a dupe.
While purchasing relics is considered a sin, both Santoro and Lavin said there’s some leniency for individuals who purchase relics with the intention of “rescuing” them and giving them a good home. Santoro said the relic community worries about the relics falling into the hands of satanists and being used in inappropriate rituals.
Although veneration of relics has fallen out of fashion for many American churches, for those who still use them during prayer, there’s a certain allure: Saints become known for their passions, miracles and gifts of healing.
If you’re anxious about climate change, there’s a saint for that. If you are taking a long trip and want safe travels, there’s a saint for that, too. Catholic teaching says the role of saints is to intercede for believers, to petition God on their behalf — and who wouldn’t want a little extra help convincing God to heal a sick friend, bring peace to their community or help them out with a fender-bender?
For the devout, relics are tangible reminders of the saints’ lives, assuring them that the saints and God are listening. When the priest of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church visits parishioners at the hospital, Lavin occasionally tags along, leaving behind a relic to give them comfort.
However, “relics do not possess any magical properties,” Santoro clarified. “Whether your relic is real or not, it's your faith in God that matters.”
The relics of the first “Millennial Saint”, Carlos Acutis, who was canonized earlier this year, have already gone on tour, including strands of his hair and a piece of his heart. Acutis died at the age of 15 from leukemia in 2006. He was known to be fond of video games and learned to code, earning the nickname “the Patron Saint of the Internet.”
So it begs the question: Could Acutis’s computer or gaming console be a second-class relic? What about his character inside the video games themselves? Could that be a sort of virtual third-class relic?
Lavin said anything is possible. For now, he is focused on growing the number of attendees to Mount Caramel’s Italian mass and lending out items from Mount Caramel’s expansive relic collection to parishioners and other institutions that request them. He’s considering adding QR codes to the church’s display of relics, linking to informational articles — ensuring that even future generations can be inspired by the stories of the saints.
Cassidy Grom is the managing editor of Religion Unplugged. Her award-winning reporting and digital design work have appeared in numerous publications.