The Santa de la Cathedral de Turin (Italy) sheet, has not just agreed on scientists, theologians, historians and researchers. Many argue that the shroud is the fabric that was placed on the body of Jesus Christ at the time of his burial, and that the face that appears is his. The also known as a trustee has several replicas in the world, two of them in the municipality of Noalejo (1,795 inhabitants, Jaén), where these days the atmosphere has been damaged by the confrontation, on account of the ownership of this relic, between the City Council and the Catholic Church.
“They have taken the holy sheet with nocturnity and almost alevosía, what they have done is a real stumble,” said the indignant socialist mayor of Noalejo, Antonio Morales, after the diocese of Jaén has taken both copies of this religious jewel from the local parish to the cathedral of Jaén, where they have become the main attraction of the exhibition of the exhibition The Mystery Man.
According to the councilor, the two replicas of the Santa Sabbia are a heritage that Doña Mencía de Salcedo, lady of the court of Isabel de Portugal, delivered to the parish of the Assumption of Our Lady for custody, as a form of maintenance of the Villa de Noalejo. “It is a heritage that belongs to the neighbors and the neighbors of Noalejo in equal parts,” he says, resounding, Morales, annoying that the Church did not inform him of the exit of the town of the two copies.
The dean of the Cathedral of Jaén, Francisco Juan Martínez Rojas does not think: “The property is from the Church. Doña Mencía de Salcedo, first lady of Noalejo, donated all its relics to the parish, which she built at her expense, and have always been owned by the parish. The City Council did not exist when this lady died on March 20, 1575.” In addition, Martínez Rojas, who is a Doctor of Church History for the Pontifical Gregorian University of Rome, a diploma in archival and Christian archeology and episcopal delegate of heritage, states that the Code of Canon Law of 1917 abolished all privileges. “Nothing but usucapion (acquisition of a property for its exercise for a long time), that good is already from the Church, and can freely have it,” he emphasizes.
On the other hand, the mayor of Noalejo defends that the Church has only attributed custody, and not the property, of the holy sheet, and ensures that the Testament of Mrs. Mencía de Salcedo has been breached where the replica was prohibited from leaving the town. “And that forever you can never provide or take any outside the church and its service and that if any butler will provide it is punished as a person who uses the assets of the church badly,” is presented in article 26 of the will and codicil (disposition of the last will) of Doña Mencía de Salcedo, of the Municipal Archive of Noalejo, according to the document provided by the local researcher Montserrat Rayo.
“What we can assure is that Mrs. of Noalejo was her owner and ma’am, the one who at a time of her intense life set out to found and build with her palace a minimal friar convent, whose splendid temple would house the aforementioned treasure and her mortal remains when her babite occurred,” says Rayo.
Municipal complaints also extend to the “lousy state of conservation” that the Santa Sabbia has had, stored in a drawer inside the Church of Noalejo. The two replicas were exposed every year around the festival of the Nativity, and could only visit you on-site. “If they tell us that it could not be permanently exposed in the town because the technical conditions for this, why have they been taken to Jaén now without counting on us?” Morales asks, that censures the refusal of the Church to accept an agreement by which a worthy exhibitor would be made for the two replicas and that would allow its adequate maintenance and conservation and its public exhibition without leaving the temple.
The two replicas of the Holy Sheet that have unleashed the confrontation between the municipality and the diocese of Jaén are, on the one hand, one with an imprint of the most visible body, and another, less visible, but both are part of a series of copies of the holy sheet that Carlos V commissioned and gave several characters in his cut. Among them, Mrs. Mencía de Salcedo, who was the waitress of the woman of Spanish king, the Empress Isabel. In Spain there are two other similar copies in Logroño and Medina de Pomar (Burgos).
The Dean of the Cathedral indicates that the Santa Neck will return to the parish of Noalejo as soon as the exhibition ends The Mystery Man (scheduled until July 15) and announces that there is a restoration project of the two copies for exhibition in Noalejo, with adequate furniture. To do this, he says he is waiting for the call for the third phase of ecclesiastical heritage of the Junta de Andalucía.
Even the bishop of Jaén, Sebastián Chico, has selored in this controversy when referring to these replicas that have been subject to study and controversy throughout history: “From that holy sheet, new technologies have managed to create a real image of the man that appears reflected in that canvas, a stamp that leaves no one indifferent to It serves to meditate that suffering of a good man who had to unfairly load with a cross. ” However, the mayor of Noalejo does not hide his outrage: “From the local administration we are frustrated and affected by this determination, which also implies a danger to our cultural heritage.”