March 3, 2012: The preserved heart of Saint Laurence O’Toole, patron saint of Dublin was stolen from Christ Church Cathedral in Dublin Ireland. The culprit cut through two bars, pried the cage loose, and made off with the relic. O’Toole’s heart had been displayed in the cathedral since the 13th century. It was stored in a heart-shaped wooden box and secured in a small square iron cage on the wall of a chapel dedicated to his memory.

O’Toole is mainly revered by Roman Catholics, however Christ Church Cathedral has been a centre of worship for the Anglican-affiliated Church of Ireland since the Reformation. O’Toole was Dublin’s archbishop from 1162 to 1180 and gained a reputation as a skilful mediator between rival Gaelic and Norman factions then fighting for power in Ireland. He died aged 58 while travelling in Normandy on a peace mission.

Pope Honorius III canonized O’Toole in 1225 on the weight of many claims of miracles at his original grave site. O’Toole’s heart had been the last surviving part of his remains. His bones were reinterred in an English church yard in 1442, but were dug up and disappeared during the Protestant Reformation of the 16th century.

Ireland’s churches have suffered several similar robberies of irreplaceable religious artifacts. Three relics believed to be fragments of the cross used to crucify Jesus were stolen from Holy Cross Abbey in County Tipperary. In a northside Dublin church a thief stole the ornate container housing the jawbone of Saint Brigid,one of Ireland’s earliest and most venerated saints. The container or reliquary was bolted down to the altar. However, it had just been cleaned and so the jawbone of Saint Brigid wasn’t inside.

April 26, 2011: Blood taken from Pope John Paul II during his final hospitalization will be used as the official relic for veneration after he is beatified. The Vatican made the announcement putting to rest questions about what relic would be presented during Sunday’s beatification. John Paul died April 2, 2005.
In a statement, the Vatican stated four small vials of blood had been taken from John Paul during his final days for a possible transfusion, but were never used. Two of the vials were given to John Paul’s private secretary, Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, and another two remained at the Vatican’s Bambin Gesu hospital in the care of nuns. One of the hospital vials will be placed in a reliquary and presented Sunday; the other will remain with the nuns.

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According to ancient tradition, the burial-place of John the Baptist was at Sebaste in Samaria, and mention is made of his relics being honored there around the middle of the 4th century. The historians Rufinus and Theodoretus record that the shrine was desecrated under Julian the Apostate around 362, the bones being partly burned.

A portion of the rescued relics were carried to Jerusalem, then to Alexandria, where on May 27, 395, they were laid in the basilica that was newly dedicated to the Forerunner on the former site of the temple of Serapis. The tomb at Sebaste continued, nevertheless, to be visited by pious pilgrims, and St. Jerome bears witness to miracles being worked there.

The Shrine for John the Baptist Head - Ummayad Mosque - Damascus

What became of the head of John the Baptist is difficult to determine. Nicephorus and Symeon Metaphrastes say that Herodias had it buried in the fortress of Machaerus (in accordance with Josephus).

Other writers say that it was interred in Herod’s palace at Jerusalem; there it was found during the reign of Constantine I, and thence secretly taken to Emesa, in Phoenicia, where it was concealed, the place remaining unknown for years, until it was manifested by revelation in 453.

However, the decapitation cloth of St. John is kept at the Aachen Cathedral.

The Coptic Christian Orthodox Church also claim to hold the relics of St. John the Baptist. These are to be found in a monastery in Lower Egypt between Cairo and Alexandria. It is possible, with permission from the monks, to see the original tomb where the remains were found.

An obscure and surprising claim relates to the town of Halifax in West Yorkshire, United Kingdom, where the Baptist’s head appears on the official coat-of-arms. A legend first recorded in the late 16th century and reported in Camden’s ‘Britannia’ stated that the first religious settlers of the district brought the ‘face’ of John the Baptist with them and this accounts for the town’s place-name – ‘halig’ (holy) and ‘fax’ (face).

The presumed 'Head of St John', enshrined in Rome

The location of John’s skull is the subject of various claims, including the following:

1.  Topkapi Palace in Istanbul
2.  The Monastery of Saint Macarius the Great in Scetes, Egypt. and at Gandzasar Monastery’s Cathedral of St. John the Baptist, in Nagorno Karabakh.
3.  The Knights Templar. In the Middle Ages it was rumored that they had possession of the saint’s severed head, and multiple records from their Inquisition in the early 14th century make reference to some form of head being venerated by the Knights.
4. San Silvestro in Capite in Rome.
5. Amiens Cathedral, France, brought home by Wallon de Sarton from the Fourth Crusade in Constantinople.
6. Turkish Antioch. (Fate uncertain).
7. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus. (Extant).
8. The Residenz Museum in Munich, Germany, the official residence of the Wittelsbach Family, the rulers of Bavaria from 1385 to 1918.
9. The Schatzkammer (Treasury) portion of the museum has treasures and relics accumulated over ten centuries. The museum currently claims to have and is displaying the head of St. John the Baptist and his mother. [see photos in another article in this category
10.  The parish church at Tenterden in Kent, where it was preserved up until the Reformation.
11.  The saint’s right hand with which he baptised Jesus is claimed by the Serbian Orthodox Cetinje monastery in Montenegro,
12. and also by the Romanian skete of the Forerunner on Mount Athos.
13. A further hand – it is unclear which – is preserved in the Armenian Apostolic Church of St. John at Chinsurah, West Bengal, where each year on “Chinsurah Day” in January it blesses the Armenians of Calcutta.
14. An arm, with or without a hand, is at the Topkapi Palace.

Tomb of St. John the Baptist at a Coptic monastery in Lower Egypt. The bones of St. John the Baptist were said to have been found here.