- ROME (Reuters) - If you end
up in purgatory after you die, never fear. Just remember to send a message
to those surviving you, care of a riverside church in Rome.
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- The Church of the Sacred Heart houses one of the world's
most unusual and smallest museums -- a collection of signs sent from beyond
the grave by souls stranded in purgatory.
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- Scorched fingerprints on prayer books, handprints burned
on to wooden tables, and singed pillowcases and shirt sleeves seem to be
the purgatory equivalent of paper and pen.
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- "Most of our visitors are motivated by curiosity.
But faith is the key to understanding the relics," Roberto Zambolin,
the church's priest-cum-tour-guide, told Reuters on Friday.
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- Catholics believe spirits, stuck between heaven and hell
until they have atoned for their sins, can hasten their entry to paradise
if family and friends on earth pray for them.
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- And some purgatory residents obviously felt their loved
ones needed a gentle reminder.
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- Branding an imprint of his left hand on to a light-brown
wooden table was one 18th-century friar's way of reminding colleagues to
say more masses and speed his soul to heaven, Zambolin says.
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- On a single day in 1731, the deceased Friar Panzini not
only marked the table, but burned a handprint on to paper and twice clutched
at the sleeves of a nun's tunic, leaving scorch marks.
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- Panzini's spiritual smoke signals are a taster of what's
on display in a bare room, dubbed the Little Purgatory Museum, off to the
side of the church.
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- While most tourists to Rome flock to the Coliseum or
the Vatican, some stray off the beaten track to the quiet and unassuming
museum to ponder the mysterious relics, gathered from all over Western
Europe.
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- "I'd say we get about 4,000 visitors a year -- young,
old, Italians, foreigners, believers, non-believers," Zambolin said.
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- Peering at four fiery fingerprints emblazoned on a prayer
book, Austrian students Michael Weisskof and Karl-Heinz Larcher debated
the validity of the relics.
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- "I believed in purgatory before, but seeing these
relics reinforces my faith," 25-year-old Larcher said. But his 19-year-old
friend was more hesitant.
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- "I'm not sure what I think. They are certainly spooky
but even if it's not true, it's a good story," Weisskof said.
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- The museum, about 100 years old, was the brainchild of
Victor Jouet, a French priest who traveled to Belgium, France, Germany
and Italy, scooping up relics to display in his gothic church on the banks
of the Tiber.
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- Jouet died in the museum's only room in 1912, surrounded
by his treasures, but the collection lives on despite a discussion in the
late 1990s about whether to close it.
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- "We realized that most visitors were not Christians
but those interested in the paranormal, or in some cases the devil,"
Zambolin said.
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- "The Church didn't want to encourage something that
wasn't to do with faith. But in the end the decision was made to keep it
open. The collection does start discussions about Catholic ideas,"
he added.
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- And although most of the fiery signals date back to the
19th century or earlier, Zambolin doesn't think the lack of modern-day
signs has any significance.
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- "We don't get any new objects sent to us, but we
don't need new signals to believe in purgatory today."
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