The Godfather of Naples

"We have gathered here," Corrado Cardinal Ursi told the crowd in Naples' cathedral, "not to watch a show, but to witness a miracle." This year, on the late-September feast of San Gennaro (St. Januarius), the miracle came off so smoothly that no one even had to shout the traditional insults of "big stinker" or "green face" at the saint to make his blood boil. It took only 40 minutes of prayer by the cardinal and the local populace for the dark crystalline substance--venerated as the 4th century martyr's blood--to liquefy in its hermetically sealed glass vial, as it has several times a year for at least 500 years.

Cardinal Ursi triumphantly elevated the reliquary encasing the vial. An attendant, seeing the frothy liquid, happily waved his handkerchief at the congregation (it is considered a good omen if the blood bubbles or froths). A beaming priest applauded. The cathedral bells were rung. The congregation, with restrained excitement, continued to pray in thanksgiving.

San Gennaro was dropped from the Vatican's official church calendar in 1969, along with St. Christopher and some other saints whose existence was in doubt. Since then Cardinal Ursi, who is Archbishop of Naples, has been trying to down-play the celebration. Among other things, he has persuaded the congregation to refrain from roaring its approval when the liquid bubbles. But recently, a new encyclopedia labeled the San Gennaro spectacle a "residue of paganized Christianity which the church has not managed to remove from Neapolitan usage."

That was enough to bring the blood of all Naples to a boil. San Gennaro, a newspaper editorial proclaimed, was "not just the patron but the godfather of Naples." A professor at the University of Naples, Gastone Lambertini, accused "modern" Catholics of having an "anemic faith." He announced that he had secured Cardinal Ursi's permission for a group of scientists from the university to study the phenomenal blood of Naples' patron saint.

Whatever the scientists find, the people of Naples are not likely to have their faith shaken by bloodless unbelievers. They have been through it all before. In 1750 one iconoclast sought to discredit "Miracle" San with a Gennaro mixture by of gold, effecting mer the cury and sulphide of mercury. In 1890 an Italian professor got results from a concoction of chocolate, water, sugar, casein, milk serum and salt. Even the Vatican's doubts did not daunt the Neapolitans. After San Gennaro lost his place on the church calendar, a fervent follower scrawled on the saint's altar in the cathedral: "San Gennaro, don't give a damn."

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