On Wednesday, the Catholic Herald reported that a relic of Pope St. Clement I was found in a waste bin in London by a waste disposal company during its routine collection in the city last year.
The workers found the fragment in a red and gold wax-sealed case and contains a 2,000-year-old bone of the Pope Saint.
According to tradition, Clement is considered as one of the 'Apostolic Fathers', early theologians who have personal connections with the twelve Apostles. Not much is known about his early life, but he reigned as a Pope from AD 88 to 99, succeeding St. Peter, Pope Linus and Pope Anacletus. Some of his writings included the Epistle of Clement, which was a set of letters he sent to the troubled congregation in Corinth and spoke about the deposed 'presbyters'.
Tradition also said that Clement was banished from Rome to a Greek colony in the Crimean Peninsula during the time of Emperor Trajan and work in a stone quarry. Seeing that his fellow prisoners were suffering from the lack of water, he knelt in prayer and saw a lamb on a hill. Picking his pickaxe, he struck the ground where the lamb was and easily hit a water line. This miracle caused local pagans and his fellow prisoners to convert to Christianity.
The Emperor did not like what had occurred and as punishment, St. Clement was martyred by being tied to an anchor and thrown into the Black Sea. Legend now says that every year, a miraculous ebbing of the sea would reveal the divinely built shrine containing the bones of the martyred saint. However, this martyrdom is not mentioned in the statements of Eusebius and Jerome.
With regards to the relics of the Pope Saint, it is said that Saint Cyril brought to Rome what he believes is the Pope Saint's bones which he found in the Crimea buried with an anchor on dry land in 869. Some of the relics are currently in the Basilica di San Clemente and the Kiev Monastery of the Caves.
Meanwhile, the workers of Enviro Waste, who found the relic of the Pope Saint, is now asking the public as to where they could send the relic.
'You can imagine our amazement when we realised our clearance teams had found bone belonging to a pope,' said James Rubin, the company's owner. 'It's not something you expect to see, even in our line of work. We know this is an important piece of history and are keen to find the most appropriate place for its final resting place, which is why we're asking for help from members of the public.'
The treatment of sacred relics has always been a concern for the Church and its followers according to the Catholic Herald. Canon law clearly states that it is 'absolutely forbidden' that they are sold, but some of these relics are lost because they were moved or discarded when churches worldwide were reorganized after the Second Vatican Council.
