Devout Seek Solace Amid Artifacts

One by one, they arrive. Passing silently through the doorway, they pad across polished wooden floors and disappear into a small chapel lighted by a forest of red altar candles.

For Don Luken, it’s “the most peaceful place in the world.”

The retired banker, fighting prostate cancer and looking for answers, is among thousands of visitors who make a pilgrimage each year to the Shrine of the Holy Relics, sacred ground for Roman Catholics.

The shrine is in a former convent that seems to rocket out of the flat, fertile farmland of western Ohio’s Mercer County.

The four-story, red brick building is crowned with cupolas. Towering overhead is a spire topped with a golden cross.

Inside are 1,100 relics.

The shrine’s collection is the second-largest in the United States. Only St. Anthony’s Roman Catholic Chapel in Greensburg, Pa., with its more than 5,000 relics, is larger.

In the religious sense, a relic is an object associated with a saint or martyr. The Catholic Church approves of homage being paid to relics believed, with reasonable probability, to be genuine.

Some people believe the relics put them in the presence of saints, who carry their prayers to God.

“I can get more out of coming out here for one hour than I can going to any other service,” said Luken, who has made the 10-mile trip from his home in Coldwater each week for four years. He attributes his recovery from cancer to his prayers.

Dick Shenk, 55, of San Diego, grew up in nearby Minster.

Only 500 of the 1,100 relics are on display because space is limited. They are sealed and displayed in glass cases built into a large, intricately carved wooden altar, which was made in Cincinnati, shipped by canal and reassembled.

Among the relics: a thorn believed to have been part of Jesus’ crucifixion crown, a piece of wood from the Last Supper table, and a nail that touched a nail from the cross upon which he was crucified.

The convent was built in 1846 for a group of Swiss nuns who came to the German-Catholic area to farm and teach. The community was named Maria Stein - which means “Our Lady of the Rock” - after a shrine in Switzerland.

Many relics were brought to the convent in 1875. A Milwaukee priest bought the collection in Rome at a time when Catholic officials were eager to prevent relics from being stolen and sold by bandits during Italy’s civil war.

The priest picked Maria Stein to house the relics because the rural setting and the nuns’ round-the-clock devotions provided security. The nuns, who wore veils and long gray habits, prayed in the chapel in shifts. The practice, however, has long since stopped.

At one time, there were 125 nuns at Maria Stein. Today, there are just five, all members of the order of the Sisters of the Precious Blood.

As long as people need guidance, however, the shrine will be there, said Sister Cordelia Gaft, who ran the chapel for 19 years until her retirement last year.

“I think people are looking for the help of God in the various difficulties they have in life,” she said. “When they come here, they find a solace, a comfort from God.”