✣ Highlights from the week online
The teeth that stand against a heresy On a visit to Milan Cathedral Bishop Robert Barron marvelled at St Ambrose’s teeth. The remains of the fourth-century bishop lie behind a grille just under the main altar. With the aid of a powerful camera, Bishop Barron was able to look at the saint’s skull in “extraordinary detail”. “What struck me especially,” he wrote on his Word on Fire blog, “was the size and solidity of his teeth, still formidable after 1,600 years.” But, when he posted the pictures on Facebook, reaction was mixed. Commentators said it was creepy and frightening for children. He was accused by Protestants of “encouraging the worship of dead bodies”. But Bishop Barron said the “unapologetic showing” of the saint’s teeth was an act of resistance to the heresy of Gnosticism and its “suspicion of the body”. The bishop wrote: “In Jesus Christ, the Word of God truly became flesh. The Second Person of the Blessed Trinity took to himself a human mind and will and imagination, but also feet, hands, internal organs, muscles, veins, and bones. He lived, died, and rose in a real human body. “We clothe the skeleton of St Ambrose in stately liturgical robes and we crown his skull with a bishop’s mitre, not to be macabre or ‘creepy’, but because we reverence his body as a place where Christ had come to dwell,” the bishop said. The home of three apostles is found The lost Roman city of Julias, home to three of Jesus’s apostles, Peter, Andrew and Philip, may have been found on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee, reported Israel’s Haaretz newspaper. The discovery of a Roman-style bathhouse confirms that a city had existed there rather than just a fishing village, according to archaeologistDr Mordechai Aviam. The city was apparently created by King Herod’s son, King Philip Herod, who called it Julias in honour of Emperor Tiberius’s mother, Julia Augusta. Archaeologists also found pottery shards from the 1st to the 3rd centuries BC, a mosaic, and the remains of the bathhouse. Two coins were found, a bronze coin from the late 2nd century and a silver denarius featuring the Emperor Nero. Teacher who saved his pupils may be a saint A Jesuit seminarian from the Philippines who was killed aged 26 when a student dropped a hand grenade could be canonised under new norms issued by Pope Francis, EWTN News reported. Brother Richie Fernando had tackled the attacker to prevent him throwing a grenade at a classroom of teenagers. The attacker had apparently cried out: “Let me go, teacher – I do not want to kill you.” Fr Antonio Moreno, head of the Jesuits in the Philippines, said the order had received permission to begin work on Brother Richie’s Cause. If canonised, he will be only the third saint to hail from the Philippines.
