Holy Catholic relics from shuttered institutions are preserved on a New York campus

Amy Surak, the archivist at Manhattan University in New York, oversees a collection of holy relics that have been accumulated by the Brothers of the Christian Schools, a lay order of the Catholic Church dedicated to education. Now headquartered in Rome, the order was founded in 17th-century France.

In recent decades, it’s been shrinking, with many of the order’s schools and orphanages in North America closing down. As a result, boxes of documents and objects — some of them deemed holy — from its facilities have made their way to the college’s campus, which is located in a hilly section of the Bronx across from Van Cortlandt Park.

“I feel really special being able to preserve and save these materials,” Surak said.

In a conference room near her cluttered office, Surak presented a small brass reliquary, a container for holy relics. It’s a free-standing brass cross with a round glass window in its center that offers a view of what’s inside: a chunk of bone about the size of a gumball.

The relic was part of the hip bone of St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle, who founded the Brothers of the Christian Schools in 1680 and is considered the patron saint of teachers. When his remains were transported from Belgium to Rome in 1937, huge crowds turned out in towns along the route. The remains were taken to the order’s world headquarters in the Holy See.  Catholics believe God works miracles through the relics of prophets and saints, making the relics a literal bridge to sanctity, heaven and eternity.

Down in the basement where part of the archive is stored, Surak opened a box with colorful garments inside: gold fabrics covered with red, white and green embroidery worth tens of thousands of dollars. The priests’ vestments were made for the celebration of a new saint.

Another box held a piece of paper with a color illustration of seven La Salle Christian brothers martyred during the Spanish Civil War. The box also contained several thecas, small amulets or lockets that contain little pieces of bone from the brothers.

Manhattan University is a La Sallian school, rooted in the legacy of this particular lay Catholic order. At its peak in 1965, there were 16,000 brothers serving in 80 countries. Today there are less than 3,000 brothers in the order, though the number of countries in which they serve has not decreased, nor has the number of students enrolled in their schools.

On the Manhattan University campus, there are currently 23 brothers connected to the order, though many of them are retired. Brother Robert Berger, a professor of religious studies at the college, said that venerating holy relics serves a purpose for modern day Catholics, adding that it strikes him as the spirituality of another age.

“Some people need reminders of people who have gone before us, whether they’re saints or relatives,” Berger explained. “There’s always a sense of wholeness when people connect to the past and I think that’s what relics do for us. There are miraculous stories about people touching primary relics of the saints and being cured. I believe it and, yet, I just can’t explain it.”

Archivist Surak said she’d like to see the holy relics at Manhattan University displayed in a reliquary with a kneeler in front of it so worshippers can venerate the relics at the campus chapel. She said she’d like to rotate new relics into the display every few months. There are relics for so many saints in her collection that she could continue the rotation without repeating a saint for quite some time.