Holy feet
It so happens that the sacred remains of St. Francis Xavier are kept in the Bom Jesus church in Old Goa. They are exposed to the public once in ten years and the last exposition was around December 2014, in the big Se cathedral across the street. I was in Goa at that time and naturally didn’t want to miss the opportunity. Friends warned me that there could be a queue of people waiting for their turn of more than one kilometer! This made me think twice: was it really worth my curiosity?
Fortunately I found a quiet moment on an early Sunday morning; it took me only 15 minutes to get inside. There the queue was split in two, one half was directed in full speed past the left of the bier, the other half past the right. No touching, no time for a little prayer, no photos, just a quick glance in passing and clear out! In this way the organizers of the SFX exposition (India loves abbreviations!) have managed to drive on more than 5 million people past the bier in 44 days! The wondrous world of man and his faith.
And what did all these people get to see? In a stall outside I bought two pictures that were taken during the exposition ten years earlier and which you see below.
Holy feet and hand: the sacred relics of St. Francis Xavier, Old Goa, India
Later I came to know that SFX’s right forearm, which he used to bless his converts, is kept in Rome and that another of his arm bones is kept in Macau. So indeed, the hand on the photo is his left hand, and probably it is not even attached to the corpse any longer!
Photos of the week: exposition of the sacred relics of St. Francis Xavier, Old Goa, India 2014
καιρός remembered 
Moral of the story … don’t be too holy. Your body will be left in peace!
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