A historian at the Italian Montevergine monastery says that Adolf Hitler’s interest in religious artifacts apparently extended to the Shroud of Turin:
Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler hatched a plot to steal the Shroud of Turin but was thwarted by a handful of plucky Benedictine monks, it was reported today.
Hitler dispatched aides to swipe the sacred relic – believed to have been used to wrap the dead body of Christ – after visiting Italy in 1938.
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Vatican officials had it moved south from Turin to the Montevergine monastery in the country’s Campania region, but the Fuhrer’s henchmen eventually stumbled across the shroud’s hiding place.
However they were unable to find it because of a group of brave monks who surrounded the altar in which the artifact was stashed and pretended to pray, Italian news agency ANSA reported today.
The story was related by the director of the Montevergine library, Father Andrea Davide Cardin, in an interview with the Italian magazine Diva e Donna. The shroud will go on display to the public later this month for the first time in ten years. (But if you go for the unveiling, keep your hands where they can see them.)
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