The Church of England is considering plans to exhume and enshrine the head of St Thomas More, the patron saint of statesmen and politicians, in time for the 500th anniversary of his 1535 martyrdom. Source: OSV News.
Years after his beheading, the saint’s head was buried in a vault with the body of his daughter, Margaret Roper, at St Dunstan’s Anglican Church in Canterbury, in southeast England.
The parochial church council (PCC) wants to exhume the skull so it can be venerated by pilgrims.
A statement read to parishioners on July 6, the date of St Thomas More’s martyrdom, said: “What the PCC has agreed, subject to all the right permissions being granted, is to exhume and conserve what remains of the relic, which will take several years to dry out and stabilize.
“We could just put it back in the vault, maybe in a reliquary of some kind, or we could place the reliquary in some sort of shrine or carved stone pillar above ground in the Roper chapel, which is what many of our visitors have requested,” the statement said. “We’d really appreciate your ideas and thoughts.”
According to The Times, the newspaper which broke the story, the church will seek to raise 50,000 pounds ( $A102,800) to fund the conservation project with the aim of creating a shrine by 2035.
Among the first steps will be obtaining permission from a commissary court in Canterbury, which issues rulings concerning church buildings and grounds, according to The Times.
More, a lawyer, was appointed lord chancellor of England by King Henry VIII in 1529 but resigned in 1532 in opposition to the king’s reforms of the Catholic Church in England.
He was convicted of high treason and was beheaded. The future saint’s body was buried beneath the altar in the church of St Peter in Chains at the Tower of London, where it remains.
His head, however, was parboiled and placed on a spike on London Bridge. His daughter, Margaret, rescued the head and embalmed it. She was buried with the head following her death in 1544.
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Church of England weighs proposal to place St Thomas More’s skull in shrine for veneration (By Simon Caldwell, OSV News)
