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Full Title: Pope John Paul II's blood stolen from church in Italy Custodian describes night-time theft, from San Pietro della Ienca church in Abruzzo mountains, as more like a kidnapping __________________________________________________________________________

A vial of blood of the late Pope John Paul II will go on display at his beatification ceremony this Sunday and be available for veneration, the Vatican announced Tuesday. Four containers of blood were taken from the pope during the last days of his life in 2005 in case they were needed during a transfusion, AFP reports. The blood, which was held at the Vatican's Bambino Gesu hospital in Rome, was never used and has remained in a liquid state due to an anti-coagulant in the containers. Two of the vials have been kept by Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who...

A vial containing blood drawn from Pope John Paul II shortly before he died will be installed as a relic in a Polish church soon after his beatification later this year, an official said Monday. Piotr Sionko, the spokesman for the John Paul II Center, said the vial will be encased in crystal and built into the altar of a church in the southern city of Krakow that is opening in May. The exact date of the opening is not yet known, but it should be shortly after John Paul's beatification at the Vatican on May 1........... "It was the...

VATICAN CITY (RNS) A small quantity of blood from the late Pope John Paul II will be exposed as a holy relic during his beatification on Sunday (May 1), the Vatican has announced. The blood was taken during a medical test shortly before John Paul’s death in April 2005, and later divided into four containers, according to a Vatican statement released on Tuesday (April 26). Two of the containers were kept by then-Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, John Paul’s private secretary, who is now a cardinal in John Paul’s native Krakow, Poland. The other two containers were kept by Catholic nuns at...