The Mystery Remains Church Wonders If Relics Are Real Or Wax Figure

A life-size figure of a virgin martyr, encased in glass and reclining on two purple pillows, lies within the altar of St. Paul’s, the oldest Roman Catholic Church in Oregon.

Although church historians say the detailed figure probably is wax, the pastor and others wonder whether this could actually be the body of Saint Victoria, killed for her faith in the late third century.

The mysterious martyr reveals a chapter of Oregon Catholic history that tried to link the pioneer west with the catacombs of Rome.

“I can just give my opinion,” said the Rev. Charles D. Borho, pastor of St. Paul’s, a congregation of 350 in the town of St. Paul south of Newberg.

“It is very possible it is the real body. If it is wax, normal wax gets discolored after years of looking at it,” he said.

The figure illustrates how Catholics venerate the saints. This year, All Saint’s Day, the day after Halloween, marked the 150th anniversary of the first mass held at St. Paul’s.

While modern Catholic saints undergo a lengthy, rigorous process called canonization, the first martyrs of the faith were given automatic sainthood.

Such was the case for Victoria, daughter of a rich Roman. Her parents wanted her to marry a man named Eugenius, but she refused because he was a pagan. In the end, Victoria was taken prisoner after attending Mass in violation of Roman law. After admitting she was a Christian, she was executed and buried in the catacombs of Rome.

In 1846, Oregon’s first archbishop, Canadian-born Francis Norbert Blanchet, traveled to Rome. There, according to his letters, he “descended to the catacombs several times.”

George Brown, a trustee of the St. Paul Mission Historical Society, has studied Blanchet’s journal.

“He was taken into newly discovered catacombs,” Brown said. “He witnessed the opening of this one, unmarked grave. Inside the grave, her body was virtually all dust, except for a portion of her cranium and her shoulder. Inside the tomb was a vial of dried blood, which identified her as a martyr.”

Blanchet took the bone fragments and perhaps the vial of blood and brought them back to Oregon. He gave the relics to the Sisters of Notre Dam de Namur for their convent chapel at St. Paul.